Chana Perry’s College Ordeal : How the Pursuit of a Talented Athlete Brought Chaos to a Basketball Program

Chana Perry is a teen-ager from Mississippi who plays basketball very well. In the long run, however, she may be remembered more for what happened in the scramble for her talent, than for that talent.

Lots of schools wanted Perry to play for them. She ended up at Northeast Louisiana University, but the circumstances surrounding her choice led to a year’s probation for that school by the NCAA. It was the first recruiting sanction levied against a women’s program.

Her story tells a lot about the growth of women’s basketball. It has come, rather quickly, from a time when bake sales provided a team’s sole financial support, to big-time budgets. But with big-time budgets come big-time problems.

“She started getting attention in her junior year (1983),” said Tommy Goodson, Perry’s coach at Brookhaven (Miss.) High School. “My box at school was just full of mail. There might have been information from 100 schools. We had as many as two and three schools a day come in. Chana was a fine, fine basketball player.”

As a junior at Brookhaven, Perry led her team to a 35-4 record. As a senior, she averaged 19 points and 12 rebounds and led her team to a 40-0 record. Brookhaven won the state tournament that season and Perry was the Mississippi MVP in basketball for the second time. She also was a Parade Magazine and Converse All-American, and was named high school player of the year by USA Today.

But college basketball coaches weren’t the only people watching Perry. So was the NCAA. Perry’s name was placed in Operation Intercept--an NCAA program that identifies and closely monitors the recruiting of blue-chip high school athletes.

Perry’s family was watching, too. Her mother, Ruth Marie Antoinette Perry Smith, started to pay close attention to her daughter’s basketball career.

Ruth Smith spoke at length with Goodson, who explained that Perry was good enough to be offered a college scholarship. Soon, Ruth Smith began questioning Perry as to whom she had talked to, which schools she was leaning toward.

Perry also spoke on the telephone to her father in Los Angeles occasionally about her impending decision. Curtis Perry--not the former NBA player of the same name--had been awarded custody of Chana and her older sister in a 1975 divorce and the two girls had lived with him, off and on, for 10 years.

Goodson also advised Perry and they got the list down to four schools--Louisiana Tech, Louisiana State, USC and Northeast Louisiana.

“I tried to look out for what was best for Chana,” Goodson said. “I tried to keep her out of trouble.”

Chana Perry said she began to sense that her mother was partial to Louisiana State. “I could just tell. She let me know,” Perry said, in the only interview she has given since the NCAA ruling.

As Brookhaven advanced toward the state final, Perry still had not decided, though. “Everyone was talking to me and telling me something different,” she said.

After the team had won the state tournament, Goodson accepted a job as an assistant coach of Louisiana State’s women’s basketball team.

“It was tough for me,” Goodson said. “I didn’t want to put any pressure on her to come to LSU. I tried to stay out of it. Naturally, I wanted her to come to LSU.”

The April signing date came and went without a decision by Perry. Increasingly, she felt pressure from those around her, she said.

“Coach Goodson was my homeroom teacher,” she said. “He would hand me a letter of intent from LSU in the morning and I would sit there and look at it all day. I never signed it. I would just hand it to him at the end of the day.”

Coaches continued to call. Boosters wrote letters. Curtis Nichols, a local car dealer and supporter of women’s basketball at Northeast, sent Perry letters on his company’s letterhead:

Dear Chana, I don’t know if you remember me, but we met at the NLU game. We (booster club members) sure would like for you to bring your family over for a visit. I can assure you we all know how good you are and that you could carry the team to the No. 1 spot. We are in a position to help you get a job after you finish school.

Another letter, dated April 5, 1984, said:

Chana, I know it’s getting close to choosing a school--So let’s let it be a good one, NLU. Come to a school that really wants you. We want you. We had a booster club meeting yesterday and all these want you to come help us be No. 1. Hope to see you soon, we need you.

At the bottom of the letter were signatures from Northeast boosters and members of the Monroe community. Also signing was Dr. Dwight Vines, the president of Northeast Louisiana University.

Northeast was interested in Perry but felt stymied by her lack of response to routine questionnaires sent to her at school. Perry says now that she never got them.

So, Northeast dispatched Joy Shamburger, newly hired assistant coach, to Brookhaven to meet with Perry. Shamburger, 28, had been hired by Coach Linda Harper primarily as a recruiter.

“She was not interested in being an on-the-floor coach,” Harper said.

Shamburger had had a successful career as girls’ basketball coach at Grant High School in Dry Prong, La., where she compiled a 74-20 record.

She had played basketball for Northeast’s rival, Louisiana Tech, and had also competed in professional rodeo events for five years. Harper said that she thought Shamburger would be a good recruiter because she was “outgoing and friendly.”

Perry finally decided that she wanted to go to NLU and asked her mother to sign the school’s letter of intent. Her mother refused.

“The first indication I had that Chana was seriously considering Northeast as her possible choice was in late April, several weeks after the initial signing date,” Harper said. “She called me at home and said, ‘Coach Harper, I really want to come to NLU.’

“Chana was trying to be her own person. She was trying to make the choice of what she wanted to do. I vaguely recall that when Chana told me she wanted to come to Northeast, she said, ‘Right now, I don’t know if my mother will sign for me to come. I’m going to try to talk her into signing.’

“Later in a conversation, Chana said, ‘I just don’t think my mother will sign. Maybe my dad will.’ ”

Ruth Smith’s reasons for not wanting Chana to attend Northeast?

One theory, at least partially supported by a recent lawsuit, is that Smith wanted to keep her daughter away from Shamburger. It must remain a theory because Smith refused to be interviewed for this story, as did Shamburger and Curtis Perry.

According to the suit filed in Mississippi, the relationship between Shamburger and Perry went from professional to personal. It alleges that Shamburger and Perry became lovers in the spring of 1984.

Perry had received a letter from Shamburger that revealed personal feelings about Perry, who showed it to Goodson. He took the letter to Harper.

“I informed her that some of the mail Chana was receiving from Coach Shamburger was improper,” Goodson said. Goodson also showed the letter to Smith, who had already expressed her reservations about NLU.

Smith said that she would never sign her daughter’s letter of intent to Northeast. Neither would Curtis Perry sign, if Smith had anything to say about it.

Harper said: “The way I understand it, Chana’s mother told Chana that she had sent the letter (from Shamburger) to Chana’s father and for her not to get any ideas about her father signing the letter of intent.

“The mother said, ‘He’ll never sign it, I sent that letter over to him,’ ” Harper said.

“Chana tried to talk to her dad and she suggested that we go and talk to her dad. I felt like Coach Shamburger needed to face Chana’s father herself. I felt like it was the right thing to do. So Coach Shamburger flew to California to visit Chana’s father. He said that he had no such letter.”

At that stage, Chana Perry wanted to attend Northeast Louisiana, but it seemed certain that her mother was not going to sign a letter of intent for her to do so.

Nevertheless, on May 25, 1984, Chana signed the NLU letter of intent. It sat in Harper’s office. A week later, Curtis Perry flew from Los Angeles to Monroe to sign, then went to Brookhaven to attend his daughter’s high school graduation. That night, after the ceremony, Chana left Brookhaven with her father. She has seldom returned.

Smith was angry. Not only had her daughter signed against her wishes, it seemed that her ex-husband had joined forces with NLU and spirited Chana to Los Angeles.

Smith appealed to the NCAA, asking that Curtis Perry’s signature on the NLU letter be disallowed, maintaining that he was not Chana’s legal guardian. But Curtis Perry had already provided NLU court documents proving that he was the girl’s legal guardian.

The NCAA ruled the letter of intent valid July 30. Earlier that month, however, the NCAA had begun its investigation of NLU’s recruitment of Perry.

On Aug. 24, Smith filed suit in Mississippi against Shamburger and NLU, charging seduction of a minor.

The suit, which identifies Perry as Jane Doe, alleges in part:

“While about the business of recruiting Jane Doe, the Defendant Shamburger did willfully, intentionally and wantonly and with reckless disregard for the mental and physical welfare of Jane Doe, seduce and engage in sexual relations with that minor child. Many of such acts occurred in the State of Mississippi and in Lincoln County,

Mississippi. The acts continue today. The acts of Defendant Shamburger were done in an effort to get Jane Doe to play basketball for NLU.”

Smith filed the suit against the wishes of her daughter and seeks $500,000 from Shamburger and the school. The pretrial hearing is set for this month.

All of this occurred before Chana Perry had even registered for a class at NLU.

The warm breeze cuts across the Northeast Louisiana campus, carrying the dank odor of the bayou. In it, Chana smells earth, trees and living things. She likes the breeze and she likes the smell.

There isn’t much she doesn’t like about Monroe.

It was all going to be new and fresh for Chana Perry at NLU. As a freshman she liked her teammates, they seemed sincere. She liked that.

“If she had any problems in her freshman year, it was from trying to satisfy everybody,” Harper said.

The team created excitement at NLU campus. The Lady Indians averaged nearly 3,500 fans a game and Chana Perry was a celebrity.

“I thought there would be peace and quiet,” Harper said. “How little did I know that it would be the opposite. I don’t think there would have been trouble had she gone where certain people preferred she would go.”

It seemed that the people in Mississippi viewed Perry as a turncoat. In November of 1984, as Perry prepared to return to Mississippi for the first time since she had left the previous summer, Northeast received threats against her. Callers said that if Perry traveled with the team for the game against Mississippi College she would be in danger.

After consulting with Harper and her father, Perry decided not to make the trip to Clinton, Miss., and Northeast won, 100-81.

That game began a wave of momentum that carried the Lady Indians to the title game of the Midwest Regional on March 25, 1985.

Perry had her finest game. She scored 31 points as Northeast beat rival Louisiana Tech and advanced to the Final Four. She was named the region’s most valuable player.

Northeast lost in the semifinals to Old Dominion, the eventual national champion. During the tournament, Shamburger was reprimanded by Harper and was not allowed to sit with the team for the Old Dominion game. Shamburger allegedly had kept Perry and another player out past Harper’s curfew one night.

Smith’s suit maintains that Harper and the athletic administration at Northeast should have had more control over what went on in their program.

“The Defendant NLU has intentionally, willfully and wrongfully approved and condoned and, because of its gross negligence, ignored and acquiesced in the Defendant Shamburger’s actions with the minor child at a time when it had notice of said acts,” the suit alleges.

Northeast began this season in limbo. Shamburger was fired in May, 1985. The NCAA was winding down an 18-month investigation. All of the women’s basketball world seemed to know of, and was talking about, Northeast’s problems.

In November, Harper and Benny Hollis, NLU athletic director, testified before the NCAA infractions committee in Mission, Kan.

Before the fourth game of the season, the threats began again.

“It was very, very unpleasant,” Harper said. “We went there (to Mississippi) with very heavy security. I made the decision not to tell Chana. I told her later. Luckily, nothing happened.”

Meanwhile, the NCAA had sent a letter that outlined what it saw as NLU’s violations during the recruiting of Chana Perry and had also informed the school of the penalties levied against it.

Soon, the other shoe dropped. The NCAA announced that it had found six violations involving unethical conduct, automobile transportation, lodging, a recruiting inducement, an improper recruiting contact and an illegal tryout.

According to the NCAA announcement, Shamburger “knowingly provided false and misleading information to representatives of the NCAA. . . . “

The statement charges: “On March 10, 1984, a then-women’s assistant basketball coach transported a prospective student-athlete by automobile from the young woman’s hometown to a motel approximately 20 miles away where the coach provided one night’s lodging at no cost to the

prospect.”

The recruiting inducement involved a watch that Harper said Shamburger had lent to Perry.

The NCAA also charged that “a representative of the university’s athletics interests” contacted Perry at a basketball party she was attending in April of 1984.

It also charged that in April, Perry had been given an illegal tryout.

In summation, the NCAA put the NLU women’s basketball program on probation for a year, banned it from postseason play for 1985-86 and prohibited Harper from recruiting off campus for one year. It also ruled Chana Perry ineligible to represent the university.

A statement from Frank Remington, chairman of the NCAA Committee on Infractions, pointed out that even though Harper “was not involved in the violations, a recruiting restriction was imposed on her to emphasize the committee’s concern that sufficient supervision of the basketball program should have been exercised.”

NLU is appealing to the NCAA on Chana Perry’s behalf, and a decision will be rendered Sunday. The appeal is expected to be denied, leaving Perry as a basketball player without a program.

“Then it would start all over again,” Goodson, Perry’s high school coach, said. “Chana’s going to have to make her own decision (on her next school). I hope she’ll learn from it.”

The same schools that were interested in Perry the first time are still interested. According to NCAA rules, however, Perry must make the first contact.

USC’s Linda Sharp has the same high opinion of Perry she had when Perry was in high school.

Goodson said that LSU wouldn’t throw her out.

San Diego State Coach Earnest Riggins, who describes himself as a good friend of Curtis Perry, said that he would love to have her.

Long Beach Coach Joan Bonvicini said she’s not sure she wants to get involved in recruiting Perry again.

Perry is having a difficult time understanding what has happened to her. She says she has been humiliated by her mother’s lawsuit. She says she doesn’t understand why she can’t stay at Northeast and why a judge is keeping friends apart.

“I treat people like I want them to treat me,” Perry said. “I don’t play with other people’s feelings. That hurts. Other than that, I’m a pretty happy-go-lucky person.”

Harper repeatedly asks a haunting question: “What have we all done to Chana Perry?”