Same Players, Same Coach, Different Coasts

By Eli Saslow
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, March 12, 2006

SIMI VALLEY, Calif. The letters on the front of the basketball uniforms are big and bold, spelled out in white to stand out against a deep purple fabric: STONERIDGE. The jerseys, like tens of thousands worn around the nation, are designed to reflect the traditional bond between high school athletes and the schools they represent.

But just six months ago, eight of the players at Stoneridge Preparatory School, about an hour's drive northwest of Los Angeles, made up the team at Florida Prep in Port Charlotte, Fla. And last season, an entirely different group of players represented Stoneridge before leaving together to play at a different California prep school.

For players at Stoneridge, the founding notion of high school sports -- that a team represents a school -- has been replaced by an altogether different reality. In elite prep basketball, entire squads sometimes change schools. So while much is made of the recent trend of individual players transferring schools, especially in the Washington area, Stoneridge represents a new dynamic: the transferring team.

The result is a school like Stoneridge, where none of the students has seen the team play a game and a private investor finances the team. Players attend class on their own schedules -- leaving school an hour before everyone else.

The same concerns about the academic integrity of basketball-oriented prep schools that surfaced in recent Washington Post reports apply to Stoneridge's players. They admit they rarely attended classes at Florida Prep, a school that is not accredited. Stoneridge's administrators said last season's players were absent from school for weeks at a time. Some players did not receive grades, as the school's principal, Maria Arnold, admits she lost control of the academic oversight of the team. Stoneridge, accredited by two private school organizations, said the current players are doing fine academically despite missing large amounts of class time because of their national basketball schedule.

As is the case with other prep schools with high-profile basketball teams, academic controversy at Stoneridge has not kept away recruiters. About 75 college coaches have visited practices this season, Stoneridge Coach Babacar Sy said. The team is filled with some of the most promising players in the country, including three from Senegal, three from France and five from the United States. All 11 players are considered Division I college prospects, and four are 6 feet 11 or taller.

Not a bad team for a 50-student school that sits in the foothills outside of Simi Valley, surrounded by livestock and strawberry farms. Arnold, 75, started the private school 40 years ago for students who wanted smaller class sizes than existed in public schools. Classes are held in two adobe buildings set back about 200 yards from the main road, obscured by a row of orange and grapefruit trees.

"We're a quiet academic school, and that's how we like it," Arnold said. "We have a fantastic basketball team, but that's a different world."

The school and the team don't mesh perfectly, not even on the purple Stoneridge jerseys: The school's official color is blue.

Florida: Troubled Arrangement

Sy had played basketball in France, where he grew up, and was an assistant coach at the College of Southern Idaho when he committed to coach at Florida Prep in March 2005. He interviewed with then-principal Steve Rodriguez at a Hooters restaurant, and both sides agree that only disaster followed. At first, the union made sense: Florida Prep was mired in bankruptcy and -- with a basketball coach for its principal and an Adidas representative on its three-person school board -- the small school decided a high-powered basketball team would bring in money.

An agreement forged, Sy went to Senegal in March to recruit players. He sent nine foreigners to Florida Prep. The school provided I-20 scholarship forms -- essentially a promise to the U.S. government that the school will enroll the students -- for all of them, promising them full scholarships to cover tuition, food and housing. Florida Prep quickly realized, though, that it had overstated its ability to feed, house and educate giant teenagers.

"Every day, another kid showed up at the airport needing to be picked up and cared for," said Joe Placher, the head administrator at Florida Prep and a member of the school board. "It was a huge responsibility. We tried to do everything we could."

The players who came to the school remember only what they said administrators never did: provide enough beds in the off-campus houses for every player, instead of leaving a few to sleep on the floor; repair the broken septic tank in one off-campus house, instead of forcing players to urinate in bottles for two weeks; feed nutritional meals regularly, which might have kept three Africans from coming to the United States only to lose five pounds each.

"They never had enough money to feed us," said Stoneridge assistant coach Patrick Kunganzi, who lived with the players. "Those kids wouldn't eat for like two days at a time. They were starving, man. Starving."

Florida Prep administrators said they fixed the bathroom within a week, provided as many beds as they could and gave the team about $250 each week for food. "They would spend all the money too fast," Placher said. "They mismanaged it."

Said Rodriguez, who has since left the school: "When you bring in that many people on scholarship and absorb the costs of housing and food, it will negatively impact the school. We didn't realize that."

Rodriguez made two other mistakes, school administrators said. He was found to have forged Sy's name and invented a school principal on a renewal application to the Florida High School Athletic Association, causing the association to ban Florida Prep from high school competition for the 2005-06 school year. Rodriguez declined to discuss the findings.

Early this past October, Sy and the school contentiously parted ways. Sy called Kunganzi and told him to take the team to the airport.

The players "literally left in the middle of the night, without a word to us," said Placher, who has since kept Florida Prep operational with about 60 students and a pared-down basketball program. "The school overstated its ability to do a lot of things. Next time we bring in big-time basketball players -- and it will happen again -- we'll be more organized."

Placher and others assumed Sy's team would be pursued, like a free agent, by another school. The most intriguing offer, though, came from an old acquaintance of Sy's with no attachment to any school.

California: A Business Plan

Mike Mahoney had made his fortune fixing flawed companies and then reselling them. When his son, Shane, decided to play prep basketball to attract more attention from college coaches, Mahoney noticed prep schools hardly existed west of Chicago. "There was a hole in the marketplace," said Mahoney, a muscular, middle-aged Manhattan Beach resident with slicked-back hair and a tan. "I thought we could fill it."

Shane enrolled as a fifth-year senior at The Hill School in Pottstown, Pa., in 2004, and Mahoney took leave from his job and moved there with him. He wanted to watch a prep program operate before launching his own business model in California in 2006 or 2007.

Then a friend called in October and mentioned that 10 players and Coach Ron Slater had left Stoneridge and gone to Calvary Christian School in San Fernando, Calif. For four seasons under Slater, Stoneridge played a national schedule with a highly talented team. About two years ago, though, Slater's players stopped coming to class, Arnold said. "They wore our jerseys, but we really never saw them," said Arnold, who said many players never received grades. "We finally decided to fire him in September."

Slater said his players stopped coming to class because the classes got too big and they never learned anything. He said he quit at Stoneridge in September because his team received a better offer from Calvary Christian. "They had dorms and a cheap tuition," Slater said. "They offered a better situation to our kids."

With Slater gone, Mahoney called Arnold to gauge her interest. He called Sy, whom he had met through his son's Amateur Athletic Union team five years earlier. Sy flew his team to Los Angeles and booked it into a Motel 6 near Simi Valley. Mahoney then met with Sy and Arnold to discuss his plan.

Mahoney offered to fund the new Stoneridge team for its first year, an undertaking that probably cost him about $150,000, Sy said. Mahoney rented the team a house, paid for all player travel and scheduled and purchased every team meal -- some at restaurants and some catered at the house. He offered to pick up Sy's cell phone bill and pay for the team to practice at a health club, sometimes twice a day.

Mahoney outlined a five- to-seven-year business plan, one he believes could be profitable by the second year. Next season at Stoneridge, he hopes to have three teams. Four players on each team -- some of the most elite prospects in the country, Mahoney hopes -- will enjoy full scholarships. Eight other players on each team will pay $24,500, which will buy them school, food, housing, basketball and, hopefully, the constant presence of college recruiters drawn by the scholarship players.

Over the next five years, Mahoney plans to start seven or eight similar programs in five western states. He will establish a league, he said, so that his teams don't always have to travel east to play.

If his model succeeds, Mahoney will receive almost $200,000 per basketball team. Operating costs, he said, could be significantly less than that. For each team, he will rent a house, hire a coach, buy a van and spend about $15 per day on each player's food. Mahoney will keep a portion of the profit and give some back to the school -- on the condition it uses the money to build dormitories and gymnasiums to attract further business.

"There's no doubt this becomes a semi-lucrative proposition within a five- to seven-year period when the whole model is in place," Mahoney said. "In the era of personal trainers, club teams and all of that, $25,000 is a prudent investment for parents who've invested that much and still have a chance at a four-year scholarship. You're paying for a chance to see that last card."

Arnold, who admits she lost control of Slater's program, said Mahoney's plan immediately captivated her. Sy agreed as well. An outside investor would control Stoneridge's basketball program.

"I'm naive about basketball. It was a relief to have somebody knowledgeable. I just said, 'Okay, great. Come on in and do it,' " Arnold said.

'We Can Be Flexible for Them'

Sy arranged a schedule that allows players to leave school at 1:30 p.m. every day, about an hour earlier than other students. At lunchtime, his two assistant coaches deliver a players-only meal, which they often eat outside the cafeteria, away from classmates.

The team arrived at Stoneridge in late October and began a full schedule about two weeks later. During basketball season, which has just been completed, it made 11 trips east of the Mississippi River, some lasting for more than a week, and compiled a record of 24-21. Players estimated that they have missed 30 school days. They said they overcome their absences by studying together for more than an hour each night.

Nobody on the team has failed a class, Arnold said.

"All of them have surprised us by doing so well," Stoneridge counselor and teacher Jeannette Noble said. "We give them work to take on their trips. Luckily we're a small school, so we can be flexible for them."

All students still lacking a high school diploma -- including basketball players, the principal said -- take six core classes each semester. Those students who already graduated can take an Advanced Placement psychology class and SAT preparation courses.

"Even if they have all the classwork, it's a question of what these kids are missing out on," said Craig Jerald, a local education consultant. "What are they missing out on academically and socially? There are a lot of dangers in kids that are moving around like this."

The house that Mahoney rents for the players looks like an unremarkable suburban home. But the inside reveals a hostel reminiscent of a faraway country.

Four beds line the walls of the living room and a Senegalese flag hangs in the corner. Two bedrooms down the hall house two players each. A third bedroom has three single beds, one per coach. To create space to walk around in that room, Kunganzi takes his bed out to the garage each morning and brings it back in at night.

Each bed usually is covered with a few college recruiting letters. About 30 schools send mail to the house each day, Sy said. He hauls the mail into the house and separates it into individual stacks for every player.

They speak more than five languages in this house and, for some players, English is only now becoming one of them. Mamadou Diarra and Boubacar Sylla, two French players, pass many nights playing a game with flash cards at the kitchen table. One player shows a picture of an object, and the other tries to name it in English. "To get to college," Diarra said, "we have to study better English."

Djibril Thiam, a highly recruited Senegalese senior, has a bed in the corner of the living room, unguarded by any wall or curtain. When he lies flat on his back, his feet and half of his calf muscles hang off the bed.

"This bed is good for me, man," Thiam said. "I'm just happy to be here. After all the other places we've been, this place seems pretty good."

Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this story.