‘It’s not about basketball’

By Michael Mishak

Monday, Aug. 7, 2006 | 6:58 a.m.

There's no room for horseplay on Greg Goorjian's court. In fact, on this Saturday morning, in the carpeted, cavernous gym at the Lied Memorial Boys & Girls Club, there's not even room for a basketball.

Today is about listening, and Goorjian has a way of commanding attention - even when his audience is a group of young kids, with growling stomachs and tired eyes, sitting on a mountain of concrete bleachers.

"The word 'learn' means that you don't start out as experts," he tells them. "It means using your mind and being present. Pay attention, listen and be in that moment."

For the past three weeks, dozens of children from Henderson to Moapa have attended what was advertised simply as a free basketball camp. Some were looking to improve their game while others were just looking to escape the summer heat or hang out with friends. What they've found, besides a better jump shot, is a classroom on the court - a place where "respect" and "dedication" are heard as often as, if not more than, "pivot" and "shoot."

"It's not about basketball," says Goorjian. "It's about life."

The five-day camp - financed by private donations and run by volunteer coaches - is remarkable for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is its timing.

Spread over five Saturdays in July and August, it comes at the ugly height of summer basketball in Las Vegas, when high school student-athletes from across the country and NBA pros alike are strutting their stuff. Teenagers hoping to catch the eye of a college recruiter; pros trying to make the cut for Team USA.

The camp stands in stark contrast not only to the big shoe companies and their unspoken promises of fame and fortune but to what Dr. Dan Gould, director of the Institute for the Study of Youth Sports at Michigan State University, calls the growing "professionalization" of children's sports.

With an eye toward scholarships and endorsements, parents are taking competition to new levels, he says, pushing their kids to specialize in a particular sport from an early age. As a result, values fall by the wayside.

"It's not that kids shouldn't be competing," Gould says. "But when the professional model hits too soon, winning becomes more important than sportsmanship."

In Southern Nevada, one need look no further than Warren-Walker Academy's new prep school basketball team to see where the win-at-all-costs culture can lead. The school, dubbed Findlay College Prep, plans to recruit players nationally and internationally, and play a grueling schedule against top teams from all over the country.

The program will be under the leadership of coach Scott Beeten, who lost his college coaching job at Albany over - yep, you guessed it - a recruiting dispute.

At the Lied Memorial camp, co-founders Al Flangas and Ken Templeton see it as a chance to give back to the community, to restore purity to the game, to impart positive values and, in some cases, to feed a hungry kid.

Here, campers range the ethnic and socioeconomic spectrum. Between 80 and 150 boys and girls - ages 7 to 12 - arrive each Saturday, most by van from the region's eight other Boys & Girls Clubs, including ones in North Las Vegas and at the Moapa Indian Reservation. They share the court with kids from Henderson and Summerlin, some of whom get dropped off in BMWs.

Brothers and sisters, as well as friends, are split up and told to run drills with strangers.

"It's about interacting," Flangas says. "It's a matter of not being afraid to deal with people no matter where you stand in life. Money does not make you a better person."

Underlying everything is the belief that sports has more to offer than bragging rights and championship rings. During week one, campers didn't even touch a basketball, and the word "competition" won't be spoken until this Saturday, at the fourth of five sessions.

"Some camps are about money and basketball," Templeton says. "We're using basketball as a tool, a mechanism to help these kids get off the streets and learn some life skills."

Enter Greg Goorjian, a man whose family legacy looms large in the annals of West Coast basketball. Playing for his father, Ed, one of the most successful high school coaches in California history, Goorjian set a national scoring record at Crescenta Valley High School in Los Angeles County, before being courted by the Pac-10 and going on to play for Arizona State, UNLV and Loyola Marymount.

As a Rebel sophomore in the early '80s, he led the team in assists and minutes played. As a senior at Loyola Marymount, he was fourth in the nation in scoring, averaging 26 points per game. For the past seven years, he has coached the boys' varsity basketball team at The Meadows School in Las Vegas, taking the Mustangs to three consecutive Nevada Class 2A titles.

And at 46, Goorjian can still shoot the rock. During one camp break, he and other coaches - most of them former players, too - put on an impromptu and impressive 3-point shooting display that brought cheers from their young students.

Flangas says it didn't take much to convince Goorjian, a personal friend who has coached as a Boys & Girls Club volunteer on and off since moving to the valley in 1981, to direct the camp.

"He's incredible," Flangas says of the coach. "These kids are getting instruction they couldn't get anywhere else in the world - for free."

At the end of week two, Goorjian drilled that point home to campers while gently reprimanding them for too much horseplay while waiting in line for drills. If it continued next week, he said, they would be sent to the sideline. And if that didn't stop it, they would be sent home.

"This is a gift, you are paying nothing for it," he said. "Show your appreciation."

That's exactly what H Waldman is doing. One of a dozen volunteer coaches at the camp, Waldman was on the other side of the fence as an 8-year-old camper - in the same gym, just around the corner from his home.

Among his coaches? Then-UNLV player Greg Goorjian.

"I was in the same position these kids are in now," Waldman says. "I've learned so much from those camps. They made me better as a person and better as a player."

And he turned into quite a player, starting first at Clark High School before playing at UNLV and Saint Louis University and finishing off in European pro leagues.

"I've been there. I want to give back," says Waldman, now 34. "It's that simple. People took the time to help me. Now I'm doing the same."

On this Saturday, about 80 kids are spread out over eight baskets running defensive drills. The buzz of the gym lights, having filled the air just moments ago, is inaudible over a gaggle of voices in what is essentially a concrete echo chamber.

As Goorjian makes the rounds, he stops to inspect each group, shouting out stances and correcting form. There's plenty to correct. Some kids are hogging the ball; others are getting rough. "No water," he shouts to some boys who've broken from the action for a drink. A few minutes later, he's had enough, and he calls everyone back to the bleachers.

The school of life is back in session.

"That was a terrific example of why you're not ready," Goorjian says. "As soon as we introduce the basketball the drills go kaput." He paces back and forth, surveying the group for daydreamers.

"Everybody wants to be Magic Johnson," he says. The hum of the gym lights can be heard again; the reference is lost on these kids, most of them not born when Earvin practiced his magic. He pauses. "Well, they only made one of him."

Then, eyeing a few crumbled plastic cups and discarded granola bar wrappers, Goorjian shifts direction.

"I see garbage in here. We talked about this before," he says. "You're sharing your house with everyone here. Respect each other. It builds character to have respect. A person that picks up garbage off the street - that's a person that has class. Have class."

All of this takes place on hallowed ground, at least for camp founders Flangas and Templeton, each of whom put up $2,000 to cover costs of such things as T-shirts and pizza.

As a high school student in 1977, Flangas, 46, and his two brothers were part of the all-volunteer labor crew - run by his father, Bill, then a mining engineer at the Nevada Test Site - that built this gym on Lindell Road, south of Sahara. Back then it was called the Potocsky Center, named after a local laborer who virtually invented organized youth sports in Las Vegas. A decade later it was deeded to the Boys & Girls Club and became Lied Memorial.

Templeton, 49, recalls cleaning the gym's carpets as a teenager on weekends in exchange for basketball pointers.

Both insisted the camp be free and open to all children. Private camps, such as those run locally by UNLV and the Tarkanian Basketball Academy, can cost as much as $225 for a four-day session.

Such camps are out of the question for most of the kids at this camp, says Paul Marsh, a 44-year Boys & Girls Club veteran who's now semiretired as director of programs at Lied Memorial: "There's a lot of camps in town. Our kids couldn't afford them."

The majority of children here come from places where they wouldn't normally receive this kind of guidance, let alone basketball instruction, Marsh says. And Flangas hopes to expand the camp - from 150 to 400 slots - next summer.

Yvette Baca-Kehoe, 32 and a Lied counselor, has firsthand knowledge. She grew up in a gang-infested section of North Las Vegas, and started working for the local Boys & Girls Club as a teenager.

"I was one of these guys," she says, pointing to a group of nearby campers she had been coaching. "Luckily I had a club to keep me off the streets."

In addition to teaching discipline, she says, the camp can have a stabilizing effect on otherwise tumultuous lives.

Ricardo Coleman, a Boys & Girls Club staffer and volunteer coach, says the need for such a camp is clear. "There's a lack of activities for kids in a tourist town," he says, especially for those who come from low-income families.

Some kids, of course, come mainly for the basketball. Paris Estrada, 10, thinks what he has learned will help him in league play. And Jordan Edwards, 12, hopes "to learn enough to beat my teenage brothers."

For others, though, it is different. Destiny Anderson is 12 and lives on the Moapa Indian Reservation, about 55 miles northeast of Las Vegas. She rides in a van for about an hour each way to participate, but she's not complaining - it's much better than staying home.

"It's boring. It's hot. And there's not much to do," she says of reservation life, and the camp is a welcome change. Here, she's learned a few new moves and made friends.

During a break between drills, halfway into the camp's first day, Goorjian mounts the concrete bleachers again to talk about the campers' progress. He takes the opportunity to answer the question that he says he has been asked repeatedly by campers and that he doesn't want to be asked again.

"Lunch is at 12," he says, adding that all of the coaches have watches and the campers will not go hungry.

In keeping with most everything else about this camp, lunch is also the purview of volunteers.

Bonnie Morales of North Las Vegas stacks freshly delivered pizza boxes as others get the fruit drinks ready.

"The smiles on these kids and the unity that you feel among the volunteers ... " She pauses. "It's more than athletics. They're learning how to be team players. They're learning life skills."

She is still in awe that her daughters - Yelena and Alyana - begged to return after week one.

Before lunch, Goorjian starts a review of the morning's work with his throng.

"What did we learn today?" he asks.

He doesn't wait for an answer: "It's more than sports. It's being present. When you go home, apply it. That means use it. Be present when your parents are talking to you. Be present when your counselor or your teacher is talking to you. It's eye contact. It's paying attention. The things you're learning here, use them when you're not here."

Basketball is secondary at Lied - literally. Only now does Goorjian run through a short list of the day's drills, almost as an afterthought. Just before dismissal, he revisits the garbage on the gym floor.

"Have class," he says simply. "Have class."