An Escape TO Opportunity : Some Los Angeles-Area Teen-agers Have Taken Their Basketball to Eastern Prep Schools and Getting a Second Chance at an Education

Barry Harper had never poked his toe in a mountain stream, never seen a deer in the wild, never stared down a snake that was not under glass.

When you come across a squirrel back home in Inglewood, he says, odds are someone shoots it.

Now, Harper walks in the solitude of Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains, surrounded by autumn leaves and the scattered sons of wealthy white Southerners, to wonder how on earth a 6-foot-2 black teen-ager from Los Angeles ended up in this neck of the woods.

In New Hampshire, Keenan Jourdon of Inglewood blows a trumpet while Dudley Moore’s son plays piano as sun sets over Pinckney boathouse on Lake Winnipesaukee.

Jourdon had never heard of lacrosse until he got to New Hampshire. Frankly, he wasn’t too hip on New Hampshire. The first time he ever stepped in a boat, last spring, he made a crew.

And in Los Angeles, Dave Benezra, 38, a white basketball coach, rumbles down the Ventura Freeway in his 1972 Dodge Dart--a green and white eyesore with sun-blistered vinyl top--as he sets off to make another dream come true and, rest assured, another enemy.

Benezra might have finished college and made more of his life.

“Someday I’d like to own a car in the decade in which I’m living,” he says.

But had they not followed Benezra’s lead and the bouncing basketball, Harper and Jourdon’s lives would not have changed.

Harper would have remained at St. Bernard High in Playa del Rey, but he might not have graduated.

Jourdon would have started on Morningside High’s state championship team last year, but he might never have whiffed a skunk or quoted Longfellow.

Meanwhile, in a high school gymnasium somewhere in Los Angeles, a coach daydreams about sharp needles and a voodoo doll in Benezra’s likeness.

“I really don’t want to meet him right now,” one varsity coach says, “because I don’t know what I’d do.”

What Dave Benezra does is get Los Angeles-area basketball players, mostly poor blacks, admitted to expensive preparatory schools in the East.

Free.

To parents, Benezra is the saintly surrogate and summer league coach who offers their children an expenses-paid escape from the streets.

To skeptics, Benezra is a body snatcher, a flesh broker, a destroyer of high school basketball programs.

Benezra got his brainstorm in the spring of 1991 when G.C. Marcaccini of his summer league team, the Rockfish, sought a postgraduate year to bolster his grades for college.

Benezra researched East Coast prep schools and crunched the numbers. When Marcaccini decided against a postgraduate year, Benezra was left holding the brochures.

Jourdon, then a splendid 6-foot-7 junior guard at Morningside, heard about the plan and wondered if a prep school would consider him.

Harper, another Rockfish player, also was interested.

In May, 1991, three Rockfish players flew east with Benezra and a Rockfish assistant coach, Mark Mayemura, then piled into a rented van and lobbied prep schools up and down the coast.

Benezra made it clear that most of his players came from poor families and would need full financial assistance.

Guess what.

Jourdon was accepted at the Brewster Academy in Wolfeboro, N.H., the school agreeing to pay the annual tuition, room and board: $18,500.

Harper’s 1.85 grade-point average at St. Bernard had seemingly closed every door to him.

But one day, out of the blue, the headmaster at the Blue Ridge School in Dyke, Va., called, saying that the all-boys school would accept Harper and pick up his tuition of $15,000.

The third player, Damon Smith, decided against prep schools.

Jourdon and Harper repeated their junior years in 1991-92 and will graduate this spring.

Placing inner-city teen-agers in boarding schools is not uncommon in the East. But Jourdon and Harper are believed the first two blacks from Los Angeles to take the East Coast challenge.

“I told the kids, ‘You’re like Jackie Robinson,’ ” Benezra said. “ ‘There’s a lot of negative publicity in L.A. You guys are the standard bearers. They’ll take our word one time. If it doesn’t happen, it won’t happen next time.’ ”

Both players are thriving.

“I have stunned myself,” Jourdon said.

Overcoming early bouts of homesickness and racism at predominantly white schools, both students have transformed their academic lives.

Jourdon improved from a 2.12 GPA at Morningside to a 3.0 at Brewster.

Last spring, he was elected student-body president.

Jourdon is not only Brewster’s best basketball player, he plays trumpet in the school orchestra, was a founding member of the Afro-Latino club, flails away at crew in spring and claims to have read more books last year than he had in his life.

Devouring everything but toothpicks in the school’s all-you-can-stomach cafeteria, Jourdon has bulked up from 170 to 205 pounds.

“He’s gone from a suspect to a prospect,” Benezra says.

At Brewster, where the student-teacher ratio is six to one, Jourdon is taking algebra II, physics, 12th-grade English and African history.

In his favorite class, intensive writing, Jourdon recently penned an essay on the public school system from which he came.

“It’s sad,” he said. “I’m here at Brewster. I’m kind of spoiled. I’m receiving an education that a lot of other students back home deserve.”

Jourdon can play ball, too. He has signed a letter of intent to attend Boston College.

Harper’s improvement was even more dramatic. He was almost failing at St. Bernard, a private Catholic school in West Los Angeles, and stayed eligible for basketball only by pulling A’s and B’s in summer school.

He is a 3.0 student at Blue Ridge and was selected by his peers as one of six senior prefects, students of honor who serve as leaders and liaisons to the administration. Harper was not taking college prep classes at Bernard’s but now boasts a class load that includes chemistry, accounting, senior English and senior history.

His score on the Scholastic Aptitude Test jumped from 510 at St. Bernard to 640 on his first try at Blue Ridge. He took the test again in October and his tutors expect him to easily surpass the 700 score required for college.

“My life has been dramatically changed for the better,” he said. “I could have never dreamed of getting a 3.0 at St. Bernard. I was excited to get a 2.0.”

As a basketball player, Harper is being recruited by Washington and New Mexico State.

Nearly all 141 students at Blue Ridge will go on to college next year.

Harper will not be an exception.

News of Jourdon and Harper swept back to Los Angeles.

This year, eight more players, all from Benezra’s Rockfish team, were placed in boarding schools.

Former Hamilton High players Charles Lewis and T.J. Norris attend the Freyburg Academy in Maine and the Cushing Academy in Massachusetts, respectively.

Izzy Metz of University High and Damu Courtney of Carson were placed at the Governor Dummer Academy in Massachusetts. Lee Roberts of Daniel Murphy High was accepted at Northfield-Mt. Hermon Academy, also in Massachusetts. Billy Reed of Culver City and Tony Mancha of Van Nuys are at the Kent School in Connecticut.

Laron Campbell, formerly of Gardena High, joined Harper at Blue Ridge.

Campbell, 15, a witness to his mother’s murder, lives with an aunt in South-Central Los Angeles.

“I called home and said, ‘Is that a siren in the background?’ ” Campbell said. “I haven’t heard a siren since I’ve been here.”

Campbell took the bus from Los Angeles to Virginia because he couldn’t afford air fare.

Metz is white, the others black. All 10 went east because of Benezra. All 10 are, so far, success stories. All 10 are receiving financial aid.

“I wanted to get out of the L.A. school system,” said Norris, the former Hamilton player. “The classes were so full, sometimes you couldn’t even get a seat. You’d have kids sitting on the sink.”

Benezra’s Boarding School Express offers something for almost everyone.

The players experience a cultural and academic education they would have never otherwise realized.

Most prep schools have financial aid to offer and seem eager to increase their minority representation, particularly if they can land a superstar athlete in the process.

“Keenan’s athletic ability had a substantial part in giving him financial aid,” Bill Pottle, athletic director at Brewster, said. “It would not be true if I said anything differently. However, the person is very important to us.”

Benezra is the West Coast pipeline.

What’s in it for him?

Nothing yet, except that he is an unemployed coach who unabashedly seeks publicity for his Rockfish players. His goal is to solicit donations for a foundation to help inner-city players with their educations. In his dreams, Benezra is a salaried employee of the Rockfish Foundation, making enough money to buy himself a new car.

The losers are local high school coaches, who cannot stop the flow of players to the East.

“I may be public enemy No. 1,” Benezra said.

Benezra said he was accosted last year in a parking lot by a St. Bernard assistant coach, who refused to let him enter the gymnasium.

Some coaches suggest there is more in it for Benezra than altruism.

Hamilton High Coach Dave Uyeshima, who lost two Rockfish players to prep schools, seethes at the mention of Benezra.

“I don’t know what kind of deal he’s getting,” Uyeshima said. “He takes these kids and takes them out of state. It’s totally legal. There’s no control over that. But when those guys do those kinds of things, it hurts our program.”

Carl Franklin’s Morningside team won the state title without Keenan Jourdon, but don’t think he didn’t lose sleep after Jourdon defected.

“I still get Keenan’s mail,” Franklin said.

Nor was St. Bernard’s coach, Jim McClune, thrilled about losing Harper.

Benezra said coaches should consider what is best for the kids.

He swears there are no back-end deals or kickbacks involved.

“I invite any skeptic to come to my apartment at 3 a.m. and see what my apartment looks like, to see what I don’t have, to see the car I drive, to see that in the back I don’t have a Rolls,” he said. “I’m regressing in life. Personally, I didn’t think I’d be in this situation. But I got sucked in by basketball.”

DYKE, Va.--It was Luther Harper’s dying wish to get Barry out of Inglewood and into Blue Ridge School.

“I don’t think there’s a question that Southern California and probably Northern California are two of the tough places in the world for a 17-year-old to come up,” Barry’s grandfather, L.J. Harper, said.

Luther Harper was dying of cancer in the summer of 1991 at the time Barry was being rejected by one prep school after another.

All hope seemed lost until the call came from Blue Ridge, a school that specializes in students with academic problems.

Harper left in September.

“He wanted me to leave, but it just hurt me so much, with him being sick and not being by his side,” Harper said of his father. “Because, basically, he needed me. I used to help him a lot around the house, bring him everything he needed.”

Harper had never known such fear. The ride from the airport to the school was spectacular--south from Washington, D.C., through lush Virginia countryside, past red-rick houses--but paralyzing.

Finally, 18 miles north of Charlottesville, the Blue Ridge School appeared on the eastern slope of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

It must have seemed a fairy tale to Harper, all the ivy-covered brick and Hansel and Gretel cottages.

It was no fairy tale.

“I was scared, “ he said.

Most accepted Harper graciously. Some did not. Within days of his arrival, a senior confronted Harper in the hall and rammed up against his chest.

“Watch where you’re going . . . ,” the boy said, using a racial epithet.

Harper, one of six blacks at Blue Ridge, held back his anger.

“Sometimes you just got to realize that that’s the way some people are brought up,” he said.

Blue Ridge demanded almost more discipline than Harper could stand. Suits and ties must be worn on school days. Daily chapel is mandatory. The day is tightly structured and nightly study halls are required.

Lights go out at 11 p.m., and there is school on Saturday.

The workload overwhelmed Harper.

In early October, 1991, he called his father.

“I remember the situation--Monday night football was on,” he said. “We were talking about academics. The last words I said to him--I wished I would have said I loved him--but the last words I said to him were ‘You take care, Dad. Everything’s going to be all right.’ ”

Luther Harper died the next day.

“I was just alone in a world of confusion,” Barry remembers. “I felt like I was here all alone. I had support from the faculty, but my only dad in the world just left me. It was a lot to handle when you’re 16, leaving home, 3,000 miles away from home, your dad dies in the first month and you can’t even go see your dad on vacation. I was waiting for that first vacation.”

Harper’s mother had left the family when Barry was 4. She could not be located after Luther’s death.

Barry flew home for the funeral and fell behind in school.

If he was going to crack, this was the time.

Instead, he returned to school with a vengeance.

By year’s end, he had improved his GPA to 2.6.

Failure?

“The system won’t permit it,” Ed McFarlane, headmaster at Blue Ridge, said. “We actually stand over their shoulders when they study.”

Nothing against St. Bernard, Harper says, but learning was never like this.

“Bernard’s has very high academic standards,” Harper said. “A lot of people graduate and go to top colleges and become successful in life. But I needed more attention than others, and a lot of people didn’t see that.”

Harper averaged 18 points a game last season for Blue Ridge against admittedly inferior competition. He made all-state among Virginia preparatory schools, but admits he has had to work harder off the court on his fundamentals.

Respect came slowly, but it came. The senior who had slurred him that first week at Blue Ridge later apologized.

“He said ‘I had the wrong idea about you, Barry,’ ” Harper said. “I’m sorry for what happened.”

Apology accepted.

“They think we’re not good students, that all we do is athletics,” Harper said. “I know I’ve gained respect with a lot of them. They see me as a positive role model at this school. I think I’ve changed a lot of people’s minds.”

Harper is a member of the school’s Happy Club, which raises money for disfigured children. He sells apple butter to raise money for charities.

“I know this is what my dad wants,” Harper said. “For me to be successful in school and to be successful in basketball. I know he’s looking at me from up in heaven, just smiling.”

WOLFEBORO, N.H.--It was a trembling Keenan Jourdon who checked into the Brewster Academy. He described the ride from the airport as the “longest hour in my life.”

His education began before first bell.

His first roommate was a Korean student named Hyun Sub Shim. Jourdon was new to New Hampshire; Shim was new to America.

“He said his parents told him to watch out for the blacks,” Jourdon recalled. “That kind of hurt me, that a person from a different country had that perception.”

Last April 29, the roommates watched the L.A. riots on television in their dorm, as African-American and Korean tensions across the continent came to a boil.

Jourdon and Shim had long since made their peace. Jourdon introduced Shim to the jazz recordings of trumpet stars Chet Baker and Miles Davis. Shim introduced Jourdon to Korean music.

“He never said it, but he had a lot of trust in me,” Jourdon said of Shim. “And I could ask him almost anything.”

The Brewster Academy, founded in 1820, is a co-ed school that sits like a castle on a bluff overlooking Lake Winnipesaukee in Wolfeboro, a resort town founded in 1759.

The Brewster crowd is upper crust.

Sylvester Stallone and Steven Seagal sent their kids there.

And so did John Jourdon, a hard-working father who did not appreciate what was becoming of his town.

“When we first moved to Inglewood (15 years ago) it was nice,” he said. “Within the last five years, all hell has broken loose.”

John and his wife, Barbara, had grown children from previous marriages. Keenan was their only child together, a late-life surprise.

Barbara died three years ago after a long battle with kidney failure. Keenan lived with relatives in Florida for a while but enrolled at Morningside for his junior season.

There is perhaps no greater haven for basketball players than Morningside, the school that produced Byron Scott and Elden Campbell of the Lakers. Three players from last year’s team received Division I scholarships. Keenan would have made four.

But John Jourdon wanted more for his son.

“Morningside has some good kids and bad kids,” he said. “There were some bad influences. He was a level-headed kid. I was trying to get him out of the environment. I decided it wasn’t the place for him.”

When Benezra presented the Brewster alternative, John Jourdon counted three and called a travel agent.

John said that Morningside fought hard to keep his son, for all the wrong reasons. Keenan was an average student, but a great basketball player.

How great?

“He was good enough to start at Morningside,” Coach Carl Franklin said. “And we’re talking about a team that won (the) state (championship).”

But John Jourdon didn’t think the school was concerned enough about academics. The drive-by shootings didn’t help.

This would not be the case at Brewster.

But it wasn’t easy being one of 10 blacks in a student body of 300.

“I had never been around so many white students in my life,” Keenan said.

But he fast became a presence on campus.

Like Harper at Blue Ridge, Jourdon met the faculty and staff at Brewster and, then, met racism.

Last year, a group of his black friends were chased back to campus by a few “townies” fromWolfeboro.

Jourdon said the men tried to run the group down with a car, then stormed a campus dorm looking for the students. Jourdon and his friends rounded up sticks and rocks and holed up in another building.

Also last year, Jourdon’s best friend, Samba Johnson, a black basketball player, was kicked out of Brewster for fighting a white student who apparently had been taunting him.

Keenan Jourdon has never resorted to violence. He wrote his pent-up feelings down on paper last spring and delivered an impassioned speech on racism in front of the entire student body.

He received a standing ovation.

Jourdon is determined to make his opportunity at Brewster mean something.

“Sometimes the kids with all the money, they take it for granted,” he said. “It’s like no big deal to them.”

Jourdon thinks often of his friends back at Morningside, the ones just like him, except that they have not been compared to Magic Johnson on the fast break.

Jourdon remembers how hard it was to learn at Morningside, the classes packed with 30 students or more.

“Even if a student wanted to excel academically, they don’t have the resources,” he said. “The books are so outdated it’s incredible. It’s really hard.”

Liza Daniels, Morningside’s principal, disputes Jourdon’s claims. She put two children through Inglewood’s public school system and both ended up at UC Berkeley.

Daniels cannot deny that Morningside is hurt by large class sizes and a high truancy rate. The school loses $16.60 from the state per student, per day, for unexcused absences.

Daniels said the school was sorry to lose Jourdon. She said he is one of the lucky ones.

She wondered how many parents could afford $18,500 a year for boarding school.

“Who can do that?” she said. “Even with a voucher system. Or a choice system? We do what we can with what we have.”

Jourdon, though, promised he would not forget Morningside.

He will major in education at Boston College.

“I want to go back and teach in the L.A. Unified School System.”