Thomas MacMillan Photo
4:21 p.m. Newhallville: After school and ahead of the evening’s basketball tryouts, 14-year-old Willie Wiggins tuned up his game on the cracked asphalt of a vacant lot at Newhall and Starr streets — a lot his mother considers safe enough to hang out on, a lot at least one neighbor fears might become lost to “gentrification.”
Willie could have walked the three blocks to the courts at Lincoln-Bassett School. But “there’s been a lot of shootings over there,” Willie said. His mom likes him to stay closer to home, where she can keep an eye on him.
She also wants him to join a team, to avoid trouble, Willie said. That’s why he was planning to go to the 6 p.m tryouts later Wednesday for basketball teams at the Boys and Girls Club in the Hill. Willie said he hopes to be selected as a point guard or shooting guard.
First he hit his home court on Newhall: a vacant lot ringed with bent fence posts and featuring cracked pavement and weeds. It’s occupied by two 7‑foot roll-up backboards, one rim, and no nets.
Willie said he plays there most days after he gets out of class at Hillhouse.
He was joined Wednesday by Carl Jones, who’s 14, and Jhari Thomas, who’s 13. Some days they play “52s,” a game you win by getting to 52 points. You can steal baskets by tipping in other people’s shots. Wednesday they played Hustle: three players; first to 21 wins.
Carl took an early lead by knocking down three from outside the 3‑point line, a crack in the asphalt. Willie played conservatively, letting Carl and Jhari battle it out while he waited under the rim to collect rebounds.
“Watch the elbow, cuz. Word to mommy, watch the elbow,” Jhari murmured after an aggressive drive by Carl.
Willie’s cherry-picking, combined with a devastating outside shot, won out in the end. He went on a tear from 13 points straight to 21, hardly letting anyone else touch the ball.
“I just kept shooting it, because they wasn’t D‑ing me,” Willie explained afterward, sweat beading on his forehead.
As the game wrapped up, an angry mother appeared from around back of the house next door.
“Carl!” she yelled. “You know what I told you to do!”
Carl sheepishly untied his dog Sophie and trotted inside the house.
As Willie and Jhari started another game, Kimberly Smart and her daughter appeared, toting plastic bags of groceries.
“Gentrification” is on the way, Smart warned. The boys aren’t going to be able to play basketball on the lot past May, since “Yale” bought the lot and plans to build a house there, she said.
The plan, according to city Livable City Initiative chief Erik Johnson, would aim for neighborhood stabilization, not gentrification: The city owns the lot. It wants to sell that one and a nearby one to not-for-profit Neighborhood Housing Services. The lot with the court would become the site of a Yale architectural student-built two-family affordable home; NHS would build a home on another lot, as part of improving multiple properties at once for working-class homeowners and tenants.
Smart, who described herself as a socialist, said she worries it’s the beginning of the end, that families will start being forced out of the neighborhood.
“There ain’t gonna be nothing for us to do,” Willie said.
In the meantime, he put the lot to good use. He won his one-on-one with Jhari, 21 – 18, helped by some calls that Jhari disputed: carrying, traveling.
“You call anything! That’s why I don’t play with you,” Jhari said.
Carl reemerged from the house to rejoin the game. He’d finished cleaning Sophie’s cage like his mom asked him to.
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Michelle Turner Photo
3:35 p.m. East Rock: One-On-One Resumes
A one-on-one basketball game was going strong off English Drive when a shiny new Honda stopped nearby. That stopped the game.
The driver, Christopher Baez, rolled down the window. He looked at the court — and at his cousin — and broke into a smile. His cousin dropped the ball, hopped a fence to say hi.
It had been a while.
Baez has been in Qatar with the air force. He’s on leave, in New Haven for two weeks.
He got of the car to greet his cousin. First came the half hug. Then the brother handshake.
It was hard to tell what was more exciting for is cousin (who, along with his friend, didn’t want to be identified in a news article): Seeing Baez, or seeing his car.
“Yo man, damn!” he exclaimed as circled his cousin’s wheels for a closer look. “That’s whassup!”
Baez, a 2008 Wilbur Cross graduate, said he’s an “A1C” — airman first class. He doesn’t fly planes. “I’m part of the security force,” he said. “I’m a cop.”
After catching up with his cousin for a moment, Baez headed back to the car.
But first, one last brother handshake. (No half hug this time.)
Baez was headed to his aunt and uncle, then, in early April, back to active duty, this time in Florida. His cousin headed to the court. Game back on.
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Allan Appel Photo
3:30 p.m. Fair Haven: A Fisherman Out-Hustles A High School Phenom
Rahmel Crudup dropped behind the three-point line and let loose a high arcing shot. Swish. One point.
He and eight other young men — men who can still play ball even if they’re beyond their scholastic primes — were competing in a game called “hustle” on the scenic courts at Criscoulo Park beneath a sunny sky and near the glittering blue confluence of the Quinnipiac and Mill rivers.
The game, every man for himself, is basically a warm-up for the full courters that occur later in the afternoon, Crudup said.
Crudup struggled under the basket with a tangle of other players. He missed a rebound from a wayward shot by Bobby Johnson.
The score was now in the high single digits for several of the players.
Every time you make a basket inside the three-point area, it’s two points. Then you get a chance for a free one-pointer if you make it from behind the three point line.
Crudup made a lot. He shot and swished several more times with moves he once displayed when he was a star at Ansonia High and before he washed out of tryout camp at UConn.
Johnson made several more shots, then equalled Crudup with three consecutive swish one-pointers from practically beneath the wind turbine at Phoenix Press.
In the end Billy Johnson, a fisherman, prevailed and reached 21 first. Crudup had accumulated only 16. He got bragging rights only. The next “hustle” then started, with a few new guys wandering onto the court, a few off.
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Ariela Martin Photo
4:15 p.m. Fair Haven: H20 Break
Kevin Isonilla just finished pounding one of his friends. It was nothing personal, he said as he stepped out of the ring at Boxing in Faith Gym on Grand Avenue.
“No matter what happens in the ring, we have to remember to leave it,” Kevin, a fifth-grader, said as he took a water break. He and other kids come in the afternoon after school . “Because in the end, we are all brothers, and it doesn’t matter about that. Instead, it matters about building skills and being the best we can be.”
A typical afternoon at Boxing in Faith consists of a three-to-five mile run on the sidewalks of Fair Haven, punching-bag practice, and boxing one another in the ring. After each sparring round, the kids get a pat on the back and a sip of water.
“We love boxing. I can’t imagine my life without it,” Kevin said as he prepared to return to the ring. A new sparring partner awaited. Nothing personal.
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To read today’s earlier stories from Newhallville, East Rock & Fair Haven, click here and here.
Click here to read the stories from later in the evening.