New Haven Independent

One of those kids was Reggie Barnes (on the left). He returns to Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School in a few short weeks (which he’s counting), he’ll be playing cello. Saturday, he was getting ready to play power forward with his buddies (kneeling Willie Wiggins, 11 of the Truman School, and Robert Harris, who goes to John Daniels) in the culminating games of the second annual Dixwell-Yale University Community Learning Center (DYCLC) basketball tournament.

Sponsored by the City of New Haven Youth at Work program, along with the Consultation Center of the Hill Health Center, this year the tournament mixed kids from two neighborhoods that are sometimes at odds with each other, Dixwell and the Hill. In addition to sharpening their pick-and-roll technique, the squads are learning team work, putting yourself in the other guy’s shoes, and much else that sports can teach.

The final games took place Saturday afternoon at Scantlebury Park.

“This year,” said Makana Ellis (third from left in back row), director of the DYCLC, “we have over a hundred kids participating. The Hill kids have been practicing at the courts near Roberto Clemente School and the Dixwell kids here. Last week we brought them together at Paine Whitney Gymnasium for an indoor tournament, and we mixed the teams. We’re doing the same outdoors today.”

The kids in the photo with her are Eric Lumpkin, Dion Boyd, Michael Spencer, Jehiel Hampton, Bulaon Hawkins, and, controlling the ball in the forecourt, Demetrius Drew, whoi’s 12. They represent the 8-to-12-year-old division. About half the kids 13 to 17. “The league is open to girls too, ” said Ellis, “and a number were at the practices, but they dropped out during the tournament. We’re working on it.”

Ellis was also serious about the kids learning things besides basketball. Demetrius volunteered that he had to sit out two games because he didn’t heed one of Ellis’s instructions last week, when the group celebrated at Pizza Hut. “I’m OK with it.”

The man on the far left in the photo is Michael Claxton, one of the eight volunteer coaches. Several, like Claxton, are Yale University police officers. (Scantlebury Park is cheek by jowl with the Rose Center, which houses the DYCLC and the Yale Police Department.) He’s been a Yale cop for five years, a coach with the league for two. For years before that, hecoached basketball for the girls’ team at Hyde Leadership Academy. Had he played ball himself in high school or college?

“Nope,” he answered candidly. “My daughter wanted to play, so I taught myself, and eventually coached her team.”

His daughter is now 21. “One-on-one, yeah, she can beat me any time!”

Some of the coaches in the younger division, like Andrew Smith, are also players in the older division. An all-around athlete, Smith played baseball and varsity football for Hillhouse, starring at corner and running back. (He doesn’t wear a backpack or a hat when he’s playing any sport, he said.) “When I was growing up in this neighborhood,” he said, “there was no league like this. We had to get transported across town to East Rock and elsewhere for league play. But I used to hang out with the older guys around here, they were really men, and I learned a lot from them. Now I’m happy to give back.”

And what was he finding most interesting about coaching? “Just getting these kids to listen is sometimes hard. But I take them aside, and they learn. They’re good kids.” Smith is going to Gateway Community College in September and hopes eventually to transfer to UConn to study sports medicine. “I’ve been an athlete all my life, and that’ll be a way to continue it.”

Teamwork clearly runs in the family. Smith doffed his cap and led a reporter to the green expanse adjacent to the field to introduce his mom. Ophelia Smith. She was one of several cooks in a line making the burgers, ribs, and dogs just right for a long line of grateful eaters. It was the eighth year of her participation in the annual picnic of the Bristol Street Block Watch Association. The tournament was timed to coincide with the picnic.

Hooks, jumpers, lay-ups, and reverses sent the ball into, and sometimes not into, the basket, for several hours. Eeach game, in both divisions, was refereed by two older guys running hard to keep up, and lasted ten minutes. Would the green, purple, jade, navy, black, yellow, or gray t-shirted teams in each division get the winning trophy?

These scorekeepers, rising Yale senior Vernon-James Riley and just-graduated Yalie Michelle Reid, would know first.

What was clear at press time, is that good feeling between Dixwell and Hill would triumph, and, around five o’clock, after the awards ceremony, everybody would be heading over to the picnic with Ophelia Smith to eat and to celebrate.

There’s been so much interest, Ellis said the league will be continuing this winter in collaboration with the DaFam Club, Incorporated, which is based in New Haven and Bridgeport. “There are going to be coed teams,” said Ellis, “for kids, eight to eleven.” Those interested in participating should email Ellis here.