Farmington, N.M.
Across Indian country, families play hoops on hard-baked earthen courts near far-flung hogans and sheep corrals. And young natives play run-and-gun rezball in gymnasiums shaken by stomping, screaming fans in small reservation towns.
For centuries, ball games have been part of native cultures in this hemisphere. When native and U.S. cultures collided, ancient sport morphed into basketball.
For all the talent and the passion – some say obsession – that has been passed on from generation to generation, the game comes with a darker side.
Despite all the American Indian schools with strings of state basketball championships, the game is ultimately a dead end for many fine high school players. They seldom go to college, or they drop out and forfeit scholarships because of the culture shock felt at leaving the reservation. Pro careers are a rarity.
Some say basketball is an addiction, a distraction but not a cure for still-pervasive reservation problems of poverty, unemployment, high dropout rates, alcoholism and teen pregnancies.
But there are those bucking the decades-old pattern – particularly women.
Coach Rainy Crisp, 25, has been obsessed with basketball since she was a kid living in Shiprock, N.M., on the Navajo Reservation, 26,000 square miles in parts of three states – Utah, New Mexico and Arizona.
She says her college career as a Lady Sun Devil at Arizona State University never matched the excitement of her high school days because women’s college basketball seldom draws crowds.
But on the rez, for the most intense rivalries, such as Shiprock vs. Kirtland, people drive for hours to watch high school games.
“The line would go all the way around the building, and the game would still be seven hours away,” Crisp says of her favorite reservation memories. “The whole community would come.”
Crisp just finished her first season as coach of at her alma matter, Navajo Prep in Farmington, and she has three missions: more titles, more college-bound players and longer lines around the gym.
Ryneldi Becenti, 33, also a former Lady Sun Devil and the only American Indian to play in the Women’s National Basketball Association, is a celebrity on the reservation, where Navajo fans still ask her to autograph dog-eared copies of an early 1990s Sports Illustrated that featured her.
She coaches girls basketball at Window Rock High School in Fort Defiance, Ariz. She says she’s happy coaching where athletes are zealous for the sport, which also dominates on reservations for practical reasons related to decades of poverty.
“You don’t see a lot of tennis courts or golf courses on the Navajo reservation,” Becenti says, laughing. “You ask any child on the reservation to build you a basketball goal, and they’ll grab a rim off an old bike and some old wood and make you one.”
Ball games, and ball and hoop games, have brought indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere together for grand tournaments for millennia, says Gene Keluche, chairman of the Native American Sports Council in Colorado Springs.
In the mid-20th century, the first facilities built in Indian country by the Bureau of Indian Affairs were gymnasiums, and they became the social centers for native people, Keluche says.
“Whenever something big is going on with a lot of Native Americans, there’s always a basketball tournament, too,” Crisp says.
In early May, during the giant Gathering of Nations powwow in Albuquerque, throngs packed the dancing venue and two high school gyms. The Albuquerque Warriors All Across Indian Nation Tournament, which was not even mentioned in powwow ads, drew more than 600 players to compete in about 130 games.
Crisp and Becenti were there, teammates on a seasoned Navajo women’s squad disingenuously called “No Skill,” which wins almost every tournament.
The roster included Michelle Tom, another former Lady Sun Devil, who is in medical school and plans to practice medicine on the reservation; and Gwen Hobbs Grant, who played at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and now teaches and coaches at Hopi High School in Keams Canyon, Ariz.
Paula Henderson, the mother of one of the teen “No Skill” players, says it’s hard to explain just how important Becenti and her teammates are to young Navajos.
“We hope they set a trend,” she says. “They have respect for the sport and for each other. They respect education.”
The fledgling Native American Basketball Invitation Tournament in Phoenix is designed to tackle two seemingly intractable problems for Indians who aspire to play college basketball – lack of visibility and lack of support.
“Reservations are remote,” says co-founder GinaMarie Scarpa-Mabry. “College coaches can choose to visit four high schools in two days in some city or they can drive two days to see one high school on the reservation.”
The June 21-25 tournament will make it possible for coaches to watch 64 teams of American Indian high school players.
“It’s great we hold this event, but it’s only part of it,” Scarpa-Mabry says. “We also have mentoring programs so we can support players who win scholarships all the way through college.”
Scarpa-Mabry believes that it will get easier for young Native Americans to attain college and pro careers as Indian gaming provides more tribes with the resources to support teams.
“We’ve seen a small improvement. I call it a dent. There is still too much native talent being overlooked,” she says.
Becenti tells her young players that she knows “it’s a sacrifice to leave the reservation. But to be the best you have to play the best, and that means leaving to play African-Americans, Anglos and others.”
Only a handful of native men are known to have ever played in the NBA. The representation of natives in college basketball is also weak, according to statistics of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. In 2000, and through 2003, American Indians and Alaskan Natives, men and women, accounted for less than half of 1 percent of total college players. But they accounted for 1 percent of college students and 1 percent of the general population in the 2000 census.
“The problem is that a lot of kids are satisfied with that high school diploma,” Crisp says.
And for those who want college, it isn’t easy.
Crisp, only 5-feet-7, was a high school state champ in the long jump and 100-yard dash. She helped her school win three straight state basketball titles. But she wasn’t recruited.
“Talented Navajo players are not getting seen,” she says. “I had to really sell myself. My parents had taped my games, and I’d take those tapes with me.”
College coaches don’t come to the reservations to recruit because native youths are seen as talented but risky, Becenti says.
“If they go to college, they drop out there,” Becenti says. “They are pulled back to the reservation because they feel needed at home and out of place everywhere else. And there are a lot of problems with alcohol on every reservation.”
So, when Crisp and Becenti aren’t coaching or playing basketball, they spend a lot of time talking about it at banquets, camps and clinics.
“I did it,” Crisp says. “So can you.”
Staff writer Electa Draper can be reached at 970-385-0917 or edraper@denverpost.com.
