Continued: It's not just a game anymore

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Every girl for herself

Competition at the Juanita High School Fieldhouse in Kirkland is fierce, on and off the four courts.

In the stands, college coaches wearing school logos jot notes into leather-bound notepads as they scout the play. The colors of Oregon, Oregon State, Idaho, Idaho State, Fresno State, California-Irvine, Wyoming and Eastern Washington form a collegiate rainbow.

Annual summer tournaments like this are where high-school girls audition for scholarships. It's the cattle call.

Resumes sit in piles atop a picnic table. A high-school senior from Placerville, Calif., nicknamed "Badger," has left a simple two-page vitae outlining her statistics, team experience, athletic awards, academic achievements, community-service background and references. Her objective: "I want to play collegiate basketball at a school with an excellent academic and athletic program."

An 18-page resume, bound in plastic, belongs to a junior from Palmer, Alaska. It includes two reference letters and several photocopied newspaper clippings and photos.

Rachelle Gardner, an assistant coach at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah, says college coaches spend less time evaluating talent at high-school games and more at the AAU summer tournaments, where they can see 40 or 50 teams.

Except for foreign players, Gardner could not recall recruiting anyone who has not participated in select teams.

If a girl doesn't go the AAU route, she needs a savvy coach or parent to promote her by sending videotapes to coaches and following up with phone calls.
 
"The player has to do the chasing," Gardner says. Gardner is one of 80 college coaches in Kirkland to watch "Midsummer Nights Madness," organized by Juanita girls-basketball coach Sam Lee.

Forty-four teams from five states and two Canadian provinces play 145 games over five days. Each team pays $450, or about $45 per player. It is a chance "to be seen by college coaches and strut their stuff," Lee says.

One tournament Richards attended in Oregon City was held in a dark high-school gym where players climb fire stairs to get to the court. The floors creak and the ceiling is low. The windows are open, but it's stifling. "All you are thinking about is all of the people watching you," Richards says. Star coaches - Stanford's Tara Van Derveer and Texas' Jody Conradt - eye talent and talk on their cell phones. "You try not to look at who is looking at you, but you have to."

The players try to work as a team on the court. But in reality, it's every girl for herself.

Cattle calls are like that.

An expensive sport to play

Many of the area's best players suit up for Seattle Magic. The nonprofit organization, founded in 1987, fielded 11 select teams last summer with 122 girls ages 10 to 17.

The team of girls graduating from high school in 2001 was a mix from private and suburban schools, but none from Seattle public schools. All of the players on Magic's premier senior and sophomore teams were white.

"The kids who are missing out are predominantly minority kids because of the economic situation," says Glenn Turner, who runs a select basketball program that targets inner-city girls. "Basketball has become a very expensive sport to play."

Dennis Edwards, operations director for Seattle Magic, says 17 of Magic's 122 players needed financial assistance to compete. Magic offers a limited number of scholarships and sponsorships.

"But we can't help them unless they come forward and ask for help," Edwards says. "And that's the biggest obstacle. We have had some coaches who will drive to kids' houses to pick them up for practice and then drive them back home and scholarship them on all of their costs. These players wouldn't be stars in their high school or be playing at the college level were it not for that coach."

Turner, who is assisting Walker at Garfield this year, started his program to help kids who cannot afford to play on select teams. The Youth Educational Sports (YES) Foundation fields teams for about 125 girls from 5th to 10th grades. Turner says about 60 percent of the kids receive scholarships.

"We embrace kids who are athletic but do not have the financial wherewithal," says Turner, whose program gets private donations.

Coaches' devotion

Shannon Costello, a Roosevelt sophomore, was one of only two players from a Seattle public high school who played for Magic last summer. The daughter of a retired basketball coach, she practiced with her Magic team on the Eastside, right at rush hour.
 
"My parents support whatever I want to do in basketball," Costello says. "They can't wait until I get my license, because they are basically a cab service."

Costello has another advantage. Resler, her coach at Roosevelt, opens the school's gym during the summer for his players. Costello and her teammates - including those not on pay-to-play select teams - receive free instruction.

"I always joke that he has no life and is a big loser for sticking around the gym all the time," Costello says.

What isn't a joke is how Resler's dedication translates into success. Roosevelt won the KingCo 4A title in 1998 and 1999 over mostly Eastside competition.

Resler grooms young players through an annual summer hoop camp that attracts about 40 4th-grade to 6th-grade girls from Seattle's North End. He charges a relatively low $85 for the five-day camp.

Resler's full-time job is running the graduate tax program at the University of Washington School of Business. He takes no salary for the camp and pays $20 a day to his Roosevelt players to help coach.

"It's the only way a public school like ours can compete," Resler says.

Campers show a wide range of talent, from Costello's little sister, Mo, who glides when she drives to the basket, to an enthusiastic but overmatched munchkin whose bright yellow camp T-shirt flows past her knees.

Karen Blair, head coach of defending state 3A champion Meadowdale High School in Lynnwood, likes to keep her team playing together rather than having them on various AAU select teams. So she coaches her players for free in summer, and registers them in cheap weekend tournaments that charge about $20 per player.

"I have a hard time telling parents they have to come up with hundreds of dollars for a one-week camp," she says.

But the devotion of coaches like Blair, Resler and Walker can't compensate for everything.

"Players with talent get snuffed out," Resler says, "because others come to high school with all the skills of having participated in hoop camps since they were small."

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