Coach Carl Strong skips around the gym, giving a clinic ‘just to sell basketball.’

“OK, ladies and gentleman,” Carl Strong calls out to the children scattered around the Torrance High School gym. “Here we go!”

The sweet smell of sweat and a newly mopped floor fills the gym as the school’s varsity basketball team heards 70 children, ages 4 to 14, into a semicircle under one basket for a lesson in offensive fundamentals.

“My shoulders are square to the basket, my head is up, my knees are bent and my tail is down,” Strong says. The wiry, gray-haired coach is on the balls of his feet, gripping the ball in textbook form. “What do we call this position?”

A few kids mumble: “The triple-threat position?”

“I can’t hear you!” Strong calls out.

“TRIPLE-THREAT POSITION!” the children scream, and then giggle.

Strong beams.

“You can pass, you can shoot, you can dribble,” he says. “Triple threat!”

It is Saturday morning and, for two hours, Strong can do what he loves best--coach basketball. Strong has taught in the Torrance Unified School District for 31 years and coached basketball on one level or another for most of that time.

Strong skips around the gym; his eyes shine as he urges on his little charges.

The clinic is for just one day, but Strong hopes that it will encourage more children to join Torrance Recreation Department teams. “It’s just to sell basketball,” a sweaty Strong said afterward. “I enjoy the game.”

For the parents scattered through the bleachers, the clinic is a chance to let someone else take charge of the kids for a couple of hours. And maybe more.

A father named Greg points out his daughter Amanda, 7, gathered with the other girls at the far end of the gym. Amanda is tall and thin for her age and looks a little distracted.

“The doctor keeps telling her she is going to be 6-1,” Dad says proudly, “so I told her she should at least give it a try. She was kicking and screaming all the way down here, but now she seems to be enjoying it.”

On the court, Amanda struggles to lift the giant orange ball over her head to shoot a layup.

“Who knows, maybe in 10 or 15 years we’ll be going down to the Forum to watch women’s pro basketball,” Greg says, and you can see he dreams that Amanda will be on the court.

Other children careening around the shining floor don’t seem to be attached to anyone. Like Number 7.

Number 7 is a boy of about 8, who wears red sweat pants and a blue shirt with a red 7 on the front.

Boys and girls are lining up for a dribbling drill, but Number 7 has formed a column all his own. While others wait their turn to bounce the ball the width of the court, No. 7 never gives his up, dribbling constantly while weaving in and out of the other lines.

He smiles widely when a tall assistant coach tries to steal the ball or tells him to get back in line. It is obvious that No. 7 wants a little extra attention.

But two parents, sitting near the top of the bleachers, have their own view. They sense something pernicious.

“He’s kind of on his own planet,” says the wife.

Her husband agrees: “He’s a discipline problem. Somebody should just take the ball from him.”

But with 70 kids and only two hours, Coach Strong, the man they call “Mr. Spirit” at Torrance High, doesn’t have time for individual counseling. Eventually No. 7 grows tired and falls back into the fold.

As noon and the end of the clinic approach, Strong has one last lesson: “I don’t care who you play against, you play hard.”

To make his point, Strong pulls a skinny boy from the crowd and challenges him to a game of one-on-one. The game is to 5, and the boy loses quickly.

But the student never stops lunging in an effort to stop Strong, and he keeps heaving the big ball toward the basket when his chance comes.

Strong scores the last basket in the little game, shakes the boy’s hand and rewards him with a T-shirt. “Let’s give him a big hand!” Strong urges and the kids burst into applause.

The session ends with the coach quickly reviewing some of the basics: the triple-threat position, the speed dribble and the two-handed chest pass.

He concludes by asking the children, “What do you do to get better?”

Seventy voices join in unison: “Practice!”