Rainier Beach and Basketball Greatness
Locally, it's known as the best place to get Vietnamese food. It is perhaps less well known as an astonishingly fertile cradle of basketball talent, although it's that, too. This is a place that has produced more current NBA players than just about any other place on Earth—as many as Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx combined.
This jumped out at me:
Those most recognizable student is 6’7” senior and Louisville commit Shaqquan Aaron, who moved all the way from California to go to high school at Beach. Strange as it this seems if framed in a non-basketball context, such a thing would have been entirely unthinkable a few years ago.
This, too:
As something of a last-ditch attempt to turn things around, the school
began offering classes from the prestigious International Baccalaureate
program, a route that had actually found relative success at similarly
ailing schools elsewhere. Though admittedly a small sample size, test
scores and enrollment have shown slight improvement in the years since
adding the program, and, according to a recent article in the Seattle
Times, “95% of juniors at Beach are taking at least one IB class.”
The newly strengthened emphasis on academics is evident in the pregame
Senior Night festivities for the senior cheerleaders. Each girl is
announced by her name, where she will be studying next year, and what
the focus of her study will be – answers include radiology,
anesthesiology nursing, and biochemistry. For a school that continues to
struggle to move its students successfully through 4 years within its
walls, the focus is noticeably and admirably beyond the confines of both
the high school and the neighborhood.
Comments
I was in the first cohort of a new IB program brought to a school that was facing dwindling enrollment and was not thriving academically. It is amazing how much it changed the school. I am not sure how I feel about the IB program as a whole, but that is a pretty cool advantage of it.
I think it is astounding that a family would move to another state because of basketball, but I guess there are people who do that when their children have any kind of exceptional talent.
Solvay Girl
Rainier Beach High School is producing a long string not just of great basketball players, but also of great young adults who know what it takes to conquer adversity, and who will then help others do so too.
NBA star Jamal Crawford's daily commitment to his old high school is one example.
Another I personally witnessed over and over again began in a UW game when the lowly and downtrodden Husky men's team who had lost almost every game were suddenly inspired by the huge talent and resolve of 5'8" Nate Robinson to make an astonishing comeback, followed by a long unbeaten streak and successive trophies to make UW a college basketball destination. Robinson's against the odds story also graced his fine NBA career.
For the powerful impact of girls' high school basketball, the best inside account are the inspiring book and movie the Heart of the Game recounting the rise of the Roosevelt Roughriders under their eccentric coach Bill Resler.