Game over: hoops disappear from school playgrounds

Chicago Reporter, The, Sept, 2002 by Mick Dumke, Nneka Amu

Kristen Schorsch and Steve Sierra. Janelle Frost, Megan Marz and Abbie Van Sickle

The two backboards behind Hanson Park School bear a message in black letters from freevibe.com, a drug education Web site: "Basketball--the anti-drug."

But the rims on both backboards have been sawed in half.

"We didn't want kids back there playing basketball. If you have hoops in a secluded area behind a school, it's not safe," said Hanson Park Principal Susan Stoll.

The school is in Belmont Cragin, a Northwest Side neighborhood of brick bungalows and neat, tree-lined streets that saw a dramatic shift in population during the 1990s. The area went from being nearly two-thirds white to two-thirds Latino, according to census data.

The neighborhood has also undergone another change in recent years: All of its public outdoor basketball hoops have disappeared. Since 1996, hoops have been removed from three area schools.

The story isn't limited to Belmont Cragin. Basketball hoops are disappearing from school playgrounds citywide--ripped down by vandals and never replaced, allowed to age and fall apart, or simply dismantled by school officials who blame them for attracting gangs and crime, according to a survey by The Chicago Reporter.

Three-quarters of the 423 public elementary, middle and high schools in the Reporter's survey lack outdoor basketball hoops. The surveyed schools account for more than two-thirds of the city's 622 public schools. The survey does not include basketball hoops at city parks.

Citywide, the number of schools with hoops has dropped by almost a quarter since 1996, from 142 to 108, according to the Reporter's survey. Hoops were installed for the first time at 20 schools during that period, but removed from 54.

The Reporter asked school officials why they removed the hoops, or decided not to replace them. Some staff gave more than one explanation.

The top four reasons:

* Hoops attracted older teens who drank, sold drugs or caused trouble.

* Hoops attracted gang activity.

* Schools lacked space for playground basketball courts.

* Hoops or schools were vandalized.

Hoops came down most often in nine community areas: Belmont Cragin, West Town and Humboldt Park on the Northwest Side; Uptown and Edgewater on the North Side; Woodlawn, Douglas and Englewood on the South Side; and Ashburn on the Southwest Side. Since 1996, when the Chicago Public Schools launched a capital improvement plan to fix buildings and create "campus parks," hoops have disappeared from three schools in each area.

Officials at Hanson Park, at 5411 W. Fullerton Ave., sawed the rims a couple of years ago because gang members played basketball and hung out on the courts in the late afternoons and evenings, Stoll said. Since then, she added, "I haven't had as many complaints, but I'm not a Pollyanna--we still have kids back there at night."

Area residents agree that the courts were a draw to several rival gangs--and that the gangs still visit the area.

"A lot of people go over there and do bad stuff--some gangbangers go over there," said Marcos Moia, an 18-year-old who has lived on North Long Avenue, kitty-corner from the school, for six years. "Gang members are always looking for trouble. I'm scared to get shot or something."

The school holds organized basketball games and other sports activities for students in its field house, though most of them, and other people in the neighborhood, "are more into soccer," Stoll said. And other sports "just don't attract the same problems."

Hanging Out

Kathy Hagstrom, principal at Walt Disney Magnet School, 4140 N. Marine Drive in Uptown, said basketball has a "hanging out connotation to it."

"You don't hang out when you play golf but you do when you play basketball. And you can find trouble with hanging out," she said. "So maybe it's the nature of the people who play basketball."

Still, many community leaders, youth and education experts, and kids themselves note that basketball is one of the most popular sports in urban America--and one of the cheapest. They argue that cutting down rims means cutting access to recreation and fitness for poor youth.

And some believe the hoops are coming down precisely because they often draw young black and Latino men.

"When I was a young African American man and played basketball with my friends, we might get loud and boisterous, and people found it disturbing. There is a perception that if there is a large gathering of young African American youth, they are automatically going to cause problems," said state Sen. Barack Obama, a South Side Democrat.

"What is true is that basketball is cheap," he added. "Young men in the inner city are not likely to afford golf clubs or ski-lift tickets. They are able to play basketball."

"It's a real cultural slam," said Rhonda Clements, an education professor at Hofstra University on Long Island, N.Y., and president of the American Association for the Child's Right to Play. The 30-year-old nonprofit promotes expanding access to recreational activities and facilities.

"It would be very sad in some urban areas to take away a sport that interests a large, multicultural population," she said.