Without deliberate
malice intent, we still today cryogenically freeze young athletes, of all
races, into worn out obsolete racial paradigms of limitations. "Racial
stereotypes" is a nice politically correct term that when broken down
becomes a squalid and dirty indictment of all racist preconceptions: that
blacks are not cerebral enough to take on “leadership roles.” as players,
coaches or in positions of management.
Athletics remain
today in America a great social benchmark for measuring racial trends. Listen
between the lines of any athletic based conversation and immediately one can
seize on the obvious catch words of racial athletic stereotyping. For example,
if a basketball player is described as” very athletic,” or if a team has “great
athleticism,” rest assured, it is a team of predominantly African-Americans. If
a player or team is labeled as “smart” or “disciplined,” the labels are
assigned dutifully to white players or a white team.
Today,
if a quarterback is listed as a "dual-threat, run or pass," the
chance this athlete is African-American is very high. If a quarterback is
judged as a "pocket passer of limited mobility," then you have a safe
bet he is white and in the eyes of coaches cannot outrun a dead black man.
In 2014,
I agreed to take on a one-year assignment to coach the girls’ basketball team
at St Louis Metro High School. I had coached boys for 30+ years but had always
wanted to coach girls and had always wanted to coach in the St. Louis Public High
League. I could mark off two items on my professional “to-do” list with one
stroke, so I took the job.
Metro
High is an anomaly for the St. Louis Public Schools, a high academic performing
building. Metro is consistently ranked in the top ten list of the nation’s
public high schools, once rising to number 1 on the prestigious US News and
World Report’s list of the nation’s top public high schools.
All
Metro students are required to perform 300 hours of community service prior to
graduation. For the 2003–2004 school year, Metro was named a Missouri Gold Star
school and a national Blue-Ribbon school. It was again named a Missouri Gold
Star school and Blue-Ribbon school in 2007–2008. In 2012, Newsweek ranked the
school as 12 out of the top 1,000 public high schools in the United States. In
2016, the school earned the top scores for Missouri’s public high schools for
end-of-course exams in english, science, and social studies. In May 2018, Metro again earned the top
ranking in the state. You get the point: Metro kids are smart.
The
academic demands and pressure to perform in the classroom placed upon its
students are off the chart. Half of the entering freshmen will not be around in
four years for graduation, academic casualties, transferred to a less
challenging city high school. It is the one magnet school in the SLPS that has
done what it is supposed to do - draw non-black students from the county. The
high academics at Metro and the college opportunities it provides its graduates
is a very effective “magnet” to entice students and their parents to come back
to the city schools. Metro is the pride of the city’s educational leaders, a
fair-haired favorite child within the midst of a field of red headed
stepchildren.
My
basketball team was all black. We were pretty good. We had early in the season
beaten East St. Louis, IL, a powerhouse with ten times our enrollment. Metro
had never beaten East Side in any athletic event, so around school, it was a
big deal. But it got us no respect from the establishment powerhouses in the
suburbs. The Public High League was viewed as a circuit void of talent (the
private schools and the county public schools had siphoned it all off),
undisciplined and poorly coached teams of underachieving black kids. We
were entered in the 16-team field for the Visitation Academy Christmas
Tournament, the only black city school entered. The “Viz” tournament is the
oldest and most prestigious event of its kind in the Midwest.
Despite
our 5-1 record, we knew we would get little respect from the suburban schools
at the seed meeting. I had told our girls we wanted to be seeded 15th
and draw the second seed in the opening round. We did not want to be 16th
and forced to play the number 1 seed, Incarnate Word Academy, who would finish
the season as the number 2 ranked team in the nation. We could not beat them,
but I felt we could best any of the other 14 teams in the field. I sandbagged
as best I could at the Saturday morning coaches’ seed meeting. Bingo, we were
seeded 15th and drew the number two seed, a large county school
ranked third in the state.
Our
first-round opponent’s coach made the statement in the local media that it was
an honor to be chosen second in such a strong field, but she and her team knew
they would be in for “a strong test AFTER the first round.” AFTER? Oh, my! The
ambush was set, the perfect overconfident foil in place. We won by 9 points and it
really was not that close.
I had
two young ladies at Metro in 2014 who were very athletic; excellent quickness
and jumping ability. The rest of the roster - nice girls, very hard workers and
very smart- but slow and flat footed. We learned to play to our strengths: work
ethic and intelligence.
After
the game, I was interviewed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and their reporter’s
first comments were, “this has to be one of the biggest upsets in history of
the area’s girls’ basketball.” Not really, I thought, but I let him go on
uninterrupted. He then said, “your team is so athletic.” I looked at him like
he had two heads. “Did you watch the game,” I asked? “We are not athletic, what
you mean is we are very black.” We are also, I told him, “very smart.” So much
for stereotypes.
It
became a running joke amongst our team that white teams were smart and black
teams were athletic. We played late in the season, Lutheran North, a north side
team that played one white girl. The
rest of their rotation was black. Late in the game we were nursing a lead and
wanted to make sure we took away the three-point shot by putting a lot of
pressure on their best shooter, who just happened to be their only white
player. I told my girls as we broke the timeout huddle, “be sure and know where
Klotzer is.” One of our girls asked, “which one is Klotzer?” Before I could
answer, one of our senior players, without missing a beat said, “the smart
one.”
