A Textbook Play

Sometimes winning just isn’t good enough. That’s the hard lesson Richmond High School’s basketball coach says he decided to teach his players--all 45 of them, on three teams--by locking them out of their gymnasium and canceling their games and practices in a year when the Oilers’ record so far is 13-0.

Coach Ken Carter said he felt that drastic action was needed when he began getting reports from teachers that 15 of his players--some of them starters on the varsity team--were showing up late for classes, failing to turn in homework, and earning less than the 2.3 grade point average he demands. None had yet fallen below the state’s minimum 2.0 GPA standard for eligibility, but Carter was alarmed.

“We’ve been 13 and 0 this year, and they kind of got bigheaded, I guess,” Carter said.

Monday night, when the players turned up for practice, they found the gymnasium padlocked and a sign that said: “Report to the library.” There they found their coach and a crew of tutors, teachers and counselors.

“It caught us off guard,” said Damien Carter, the coach’s 16-year-old son and a starting guard on the varsity team.

“I told them I was canceling games and practice until the players did better at school,” Coach Carter said. “Now we spend those two hours we would be practicing every day with teachers and volunteers.”

Carter’s decision has trained a national media spotlight on this school of 1,527 students, located in a rough neighborhood of a blue-collar East Bay town. Tired of fielding interview requests, Carter held a news conference to explain his actions Thursday. But on Friday, he was still answering questions for the networks and cable news stations.

When he made his announcement to the teams, Carter said, his decision brought howls of protest from some players, nods of assent from others.

“When I first heard about it, I didn’t believe it,” said Christopher Gibson, a starting forward on the varsity team. “I was like, ‘Coach Carter’s not gonna do that to us.’ ”

But he agreed with the coach that success on the court had gone to the heads of many players.

“We were excited, the whole school was excited to play ball,” Gibson said. “We’re walking around with our [team] sweatshirts on, and we’d forget to go to class.”

Since news of the lockout spread, Carter says, response from parents and students has been overwhelmingly supportive.

“The team players, their parents are with me 100%,” he said. “Some other parents have told me they disagree with me.”

Pam Walker Fletcher, Gibson’s mother, said she understands why the coach has acted, but wonders why he didn’t call parents first to let them know.

“I learned about this on the radio yesterday morning,” she said Friday. “Then my kids came home from school yesterday afternoon and said, ‘Mom, Coach Carter gave a press conference up there.’ My son supports his coach, but I just don’t agree with the way he is doing it. The parents of those kids should have been right up there with him at that press conference, backing him up.”

School board President Diana Easton said she approves of the coach’s actions.

“I think it’s great,” she said. “He’s saying there ought to be a balance between sports and academics.”

But Charles Ramsey, another board member, said he learned about the lockout from news reports and was unhappy about it.

“If they are going to be making policy decisions like that, it should be made through the school board,” Ramsey said. “They never brought it up to the board.”

Richmond High School Principal Haidee Foust-Whitmore said she was taken aback when Carter told her he was planning to lock out the team until further notice.

“I laughed at first, when he shared his proposal with me,” she said. “I said, ‘This man must be crazy.’ But the bottom line is that he was trying to get the kids up to par, get them working up to their potential. So I said, ‘This is great.’ ”

Her office has been flooded with letters, faxes and phone calls from people congratulating the coach and the school, Foust-Whitmore said.

“We’ve had alumni coming in saying, ‘I graduated from this school. Is there anything I can do to help?’ There has been an outpouring from the community. It is absolutely shocking.”

Players who are doing well academically are helping those who are struggling. Damien, with a 3.75 grade point average, is one of the tutors.

Carter canceled two scheduled games, five practices and a pep rally last week. On Tuesday, he said, he will begin to forfeit league games unless he is convinced his players are back on track. It’s not easy to keep his players off the court, or to see hard-working students suffer with the others, Carter said. But he vows he will see his action through.

“Look, I want to play basketball,” Carter said. “I love basketball, but I would rather damage morale than damage some man’s life. We know our kids can play basketball. I want our kids to go to college.”

Carter, one of nine children, was a basketball star at Richmond High in the 1970s. Just 5 feet 8, he set the school’s scoring record and went on to play in college before opening his own sports store. He came back to the school last year as its basketball coach, determined to resurrect a team that for years had a dismal record.

Last year, the team was 17-9. This year, it has a shot at the playoffs for the first time since 1977 and is ranked third in the state among Division II schools.

But Carter said he is just as determined to resurrect a sense of spirit and discipline at a high school that has long had a reputation in the West Contra Costa County Unified School District for being the worst of five public high schools in Richmond.

He has brought with him a strict sense of conduct that he says was instilled in him by his parents. A man who addresses strangers as “Ma’am” or “Sir,” he required parents and players to sign contracts at the start of the season.

The contracts say players must maintain the 2.3 GPA. In addition, each player had to agree to sit in the front row of every class, to complete all homework assignments and to show up for class on time. Carter asks teachers to report to him weekly on how his athletes are doing.

“I say, ‘If you can make it to basketball on time, you can make it to class on time,’ ” Carter said. “The only reason to be late is if you die.”

It was a different sort of approach than most players were used to.

Located in a neighborhood plagued by gangs, Richmond High in the 1980s became a place attended only by students who had no other options, said Foust-Whitmore, who began her job at Richmond High this year.

“People who lived in the attendance area were opting to go to other schools and trying to get out of the high school. There was a time when we couldn’t even field a football team, because we didn’t have enough kids motivated to play,” she said.

The school has improved its team sports and its school spirit in recent years, Foust-Whitmore said, but still is struggling academically.

“Right now, our test scores in reading and literacy are at the bottom,” she said. “There is nowhere for them to go but up.”

The student body is 55% Latino, 28% African American, with a smattering of whites and Laotians. It has the largest percentage of students who speak limited English of any high school in the district, Foust-Whitmore said, and its entire student body qualifies for the federally subsidized hot lunch program for low-income families.

Students walk through dark, drab halls to attend class. A larger-than-expected enrollment means that in classes such as biology and social sciences, entire classes must share a single textbook.

“With the socioeconomic conditions of our students, it’s difficult to get the same resources as schools from more affluent communities,” said Dean Kal Phan, who oversees discipline and security on campus. There is no Parent-Teacher Assn.

The basketball team has given students something to cheer about this year, and on Friday, some said they resented Carter taking that away from them.

“We need stuff to look at,” said Libby Moore, a 14-year-old freshman, who stood with a group of friends outside the school after class. “We’re just hanging out here on Friday afternoon instead of watching a game.”

One teacher said she worries that Carter may have gone too far.

“My concern is that the majority of the players are eligible,” said Susan Kahn, who teaches several courses and coaches volleyball and badminton. “In this case, do you punish the whole team? The kids who are doing well don’t get to play until the others get their grades up. How long can this be sustained?”

But Carter said the act of making players responsible for each other has driven home the point that they stand or fall together.

“When we win as a team, does only one person score? We’re coming together. The guys who had slipped up are turning in homework and getting to class on time. Kids are teleconferencing at night to help each other.”

Carter said he will decide Monday whether enough progress has been made to warrant reopening the gym and keeping to the team’s game schedule.

“It’s a cut-and-dried decision for me,” he said. “If our team has not improved, we will cancel the games and go on with our daily lives.”