Nagel: Basketball seniors recall a more innocent time

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By Kyle Nagel and the Dayton Daily News
12:21 AM Wednesday, October 28, 2009

The games were fun for Ryan Bass and his elementary school basketball teammates. They came from different schools and areas, but they joined the same select team and played, traveled and joked together.

It wasn’t, at that time, necessarily about winning, either.

“It was all about who had the newest shoes or wristbands,” Bass said.

Bass, now a member of the Dunbar High School team, was a big Penny Hardaway fan, so he wore the sweatband on his left forearm to mimic the NBA player.

He was then asked to glance around the meeting room and pick out the player who always had the coolest stuff of the group.

He looked, then grinned.

“Probably me,” Bass said.

Bass, like 24 other area senior basketball players from 10 schools, was sitting in a back room at Golden Corral on Sunday, Oct. 25. Many sat at a long table in the back chatting and laughing while parents, former coaches and current coaches hugged and reminisced.

The event was organized as a thank you to the players who had all played with or against each other on the select and AAU basketball circuit and a reminder that the coming season — each will be a senior — is both important for its basketball and the place it holds in life.

One of the greatest aspects of youth basketball, the players said, was learning the game from coaches like Harvey Stewart — the event’s organizer whose son, Deon, plays for Dunbar. Plus, at tournaments, it was just fun to play the games.

“We could play all the time,” said Connor Cummins, who now plays for Alter. “Now it’s harder to play all day, but back then we wanted to play as much as we could.”

The youth teams composed of some of the Miami Valley’s best future players also showed them the importance of getting along. The teams, beginning with the Dayton Mohawks, had a nearly even mix of black and white players, which attendees said wasn’t all that common.

“When we went out of town, we played teams that were usually almost all black or all white,” Bass said. “We had a variety, which really helped us.”

The dinner was filled with memories, presentations of congratulatory plaques from Stewart to the group and thoughts from parents and mentors. Joe Staley, the Chaminade Julienne coach, told the group, “I consider my best friends in life to be the guys I played with and the guys I played against.”

That was the theme, that sports, including basketball, can build bonds for elementary schoolers going forward that are some of the strongest they’ll remember. As seniors, these players are at the level to realize that, Stewart said.

As the presentations wound down, Geron Johnson, the Dunbar star, asked to speak.

“This is a real family, right here in this room,” Johnson said.

He paused as many seemed to wonder why one of the players most quick to humor was saying some of the most emotional words.

“Actually,” he said as he headed toward the door, “I just wanted to be the first one to eat.”

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