During
the Summer of 1971, Athletic Director Sam Washington, who often works a
sixteen-hour non-stop day, supervised thirty-six basketball teams.
The caliber of play in the Men's League, comprising sixteen teams, makes participating NBA players such as Dave Bing, Jimmy Walker and Spencer Haywood feel at home. Along with a large group of professionals, college players and former college players as well as high school stars lend glamour to the competition. Playing Saturdays, Sundays, and Wednesdays, this League, the showpiece of St. Cecilia's basketball program, attracts an average of four hundred fans per game and their "psychological importance...to our total program cannot be overestimated."
The League for boys nineteen and under comprises eight twelve-man teams. Ceciliaville sponsors two teams and the others are asked to get their own sponsors. Each team plays twice a week before about two-hundred spectators, and are also entered in fourteen games per Summer in the Boys' Club League.
All-white teams and a number of racially mixed squads fit in without comment in the generally all-black roster, with race no issue on the courts, Mr. Washington reports. "The idea is to get some of these kids exposure," he stated in a newspaper interview. "We have coaches coming from as far as California to look for players...We don't just get kids into colleges. We get some kids back into high school who have dropped out."
SELF-DISCIPLINE
Strict self-policed rules on swearing or rough play, and proper care of their hand-me-down uniforms, are part of the responsibilities the young players shoulder. "You don't see one dirty word written on our walls," reports Father "O". "We haven't had a bit of trouble at the center in over a year," adds a member of the Detroit Youth Bureau. Vandalism at St. Cecilia's, a five million dollar complex, has virtually come to a halt since Ceciliaville became a proud feeling as well as a word in northwest Detroit.
Continued
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