Courting Success
The floor is cement, the backboards made of steel instead of plexiglass. The court, about two-thirds the length of what it should be, doesn’t have boundary lines, three-point arcs or a midcourt stripe.
“Sometimes we play it off the walls just to keep it going,” said Bob Welsh, coach of the team that practices here.
This is basketball at Camp Joseph Scott Academy in Saugus, where there are no returning players. If the academy serves its purpose, there never will be.
The players are incarcerated, serving no fewer than 16-week terms for felonies ranging from prostitution to armed robbery.
This is a high school girls’ team, and there are no home games at the locked-down, medium-security all-girls’ facility. Rarely does Scott draw more than a half-dozen fans at a game.
This isn’t the way girls’ basketball is played at high schools in San Clemente, Harbor City or Ventura.
The play is unrefined, but occasionally athletic. Despite the criminal records of the players, they are almost courteous. Until the final minute of a game earlier this season against Encino Holy Martyrs Armenian, not a single curse word was uttered, or elbow thrown in frustration. At least not by Scott players.
And despite their shoddy practice facilities, they have won enough games to make the playoffs.
Scott Academy finished the regular season at 16-6 and won the Alpha League title with a 7-1 record. Last year, the program’s first, the Royals didn’t win any of their 16 games.
But their efforts aren’t all about winning.
“Wins and losses are secondary,” said Welsh, a probation officer for 19 years with the Los Angeles County Probation Dept. “Our goal is to build a stronger person.”
Only time, perhaps years, will tell if this season is a success. The senior point guard, Ana Orozco, could have left Scott on Nov. 8, 2001, when her sentence expired, yet she has stayed so she can finish the season, hopeful that she might be able to take her game to the next level--in her case, a community college.
“It makes me appreciate my family, my friends and my freedom,” said Orozco, 17, the team’s 4-foot-9 floor leader. “I’m looking at my life from a different point of view. Before, I was running the streets. Now, I actually want to make something of my life.”
That’s what Richard Shumsky wants to hear. Shumsky is the chief probation officer for L.A. County, and Scott Academy is his baby. He was responsible for its start-up, wanting a female equivalent to the all-boys Camp Kilpatrick in Malibu that has had a Southern Section affiliation since 1985.
“Winning’s not important,” Shumsky said. “Last year, we had a perfectly horrible team, but they had fun. It’s the effort, the organization, that matters. We want them to have anything pro-social that will help them in the community.”
Welsh stresses to players that they’re making history, “setting a path for others to follow.”
“We’re working the bugs out, getting to the point where they could make or break the program,” said Welsh, who coached the boys’ team at Kilpatrick in the late 1980s. “If we’re successful, not only on the court but building their character and having them be regular athletes at a regular high school, that’s what will be the ultimate measure of this program’s success.”
If the team has a star, it’s Alexis Brown, 17, a junior averaging about 23 points. “It’s phenomenal how much she has blossomed as a person,” Welsh said.
To be eligible to participate, players must have a B average and exhibit model behavior. Players are also limited to one season. If anyone who is released from Scott Academy finds herself sentenced a second time, she won’t be playing basketball.
“I had a ‘screw you’ attitude,” said Teeya Kemp, 14, a freshman. “I’m working on it. I can’t be like that on a basketball team.”
Kemp said that before she arrived at Scott on Oct. 30, she kept to herself and didn’t have many friends. She lived a life “surrounded by drugs, partying, not caring about anything--not even my mother, my sister or my dad.”
But the elements of life learned while under arrest--living in the 115-bed facility at Scott--hopefully will make her a better fit in society.
“I’ve learned teamwork, learned a lot of discipline,” said Kemp, who like many of the 15 players in the basketball program acknowledged having a problem controlling anger. “I just liked to start swinging on people. I used to get in fights all the time. This has helped me learn how to deal with people.”
Players at Scott can face solitary confinement in an isolation room at Challenger Memorial Youth Center in Lancaster. It’s a tool that has been used on players in the past. Breaking the rules results in solitary confinement for 24 hours or an extended camp stay.
“Camp Scott opened my eyes, helped me to realize my lifestyle before I got arrested was [wrong],” Kemp said. “Basketball is my life, and when I get out, I’m never going to get arrested again.
“I’m going to go to school, get myself together, and dedicate myself to basketball and get my education.”
Ateliana Tuli, who shares guardianship of her sister, senior Melanie Tuli, said Melanie has become more receptive to learning and more outgoing since getting involved with the team.
In the game against Holy Martyrs, a 60-53 loss in which the Lady Royals lost a fourth-quarter lead, the only person exhibiting any hint of frustration was Toni Jackson, 17, a junior.
“She elbowed me, and I pushed her back,” Jackson said of her brief lapse in the game’s final minute. “When I first got here, I wasn’t a little angel. I’m no angel now. You saw me push that girl. But I’ve learned a lot. I’ve changed a lot. You grow up.”