Aurora – Chris Kelly remembers the laughter when he told his middle-school friends he was going to Aurora Central High School.
Why would a kid, especially an African-American, want to play for the Trojans? The basketball team was fodder, the school’s demographics were shifting heavily to reflect a growing Hispanic population, and several top-flight athletes had left to find championships and scholarships playing for other schools.
Five years ago, Aurora Central, located four blocks south of Colfax Avenue near Peoria, was getting beat by an average of 60 points. Only a brave few souls could stand to watch.
Tonight, the Trojans will put their 26-0 record on the line against defending champion Mullen in the Final Four of the boys Class 5A state tournament at the University of Colorado’s Coors Events Center in Boulder.
It’s the third consecutive season the Trojans have entered the postseason undefeated. It could be called a miracle, but most miracles don’t require the kind of endless work coach Bob Caton, the school administrators, teachers, alumni, community members, parents and the student-athletes have dedicated to make it possible.
No, this is more like a revolution against apathy and poverty.
“I’ve got a lot of pride, especially walking through the school hallways now,” said Kelly, a 6-foot-2 junior forward. “People know who the basketball team is and they congratulate you more. It brings the school together. I remember my older brothers and cousins that went here and were a part of those 0-18 teams. I remember coming to the games and nobody was here.”
Said senior Sean Cunningham, an all-state selection in basketball and football: “I remember being in middle school and I thought it would be a fact that I would not be at this school.”
Welcome to the neighborhood
Ann Jordan can cook up a mean breakfast spread, complete with pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, fruit and syrup. Lots and lots of syrup.
As a consumer and family science teacher (you remember it as home economics), Jordan has been on cooking shows. She is big on good nutrition. She sees very little of it at Aurora Central, where 67 percent of the student population is on the free lunch program, up from 37 percent in 2003.
She cooks for the basketball team at least once a week. After practice Tuesday, the team inhales flapjacks, guzzles milk and laughs endlessly at the inside jokes and impersonations from junior Darius Johnson.
On one hand, it’s just a meal packed with carbohydrates, but it’s also a chance to eat, be a kid and hang out someplace a little safer than some of the neighborhood haunts.
Paul Glennon has worked in the district since 1988 and has been a counselor at Aurora Central since 2002. He deals with kids who have watched deaths and violent domestic disputes, witnessed parents try to give them away to social services or lament their decision not to have an abortion.
“There are tough neighborhoods over here,” Glennon said.
Aurora Central’s student population is 64 to 70 percent Hispanic. The population has a high mobility rate and high poverty, principal Dean Stecklein said. Sixty-five percent of sophomores take English as a second language, up from 34 percent four years ago. Fifteen percent of the school is African-American, and another 4 percent are immigrants from more than a dozen African countries.
All but one of the varsity basketball players is black. Many of their friends before them washed out of sports or went to school elsewhere, such as Chatfield graduate LenDale White, now a running back for the Tennessee Titans.
External temptations are ever- present. But so is the reminder that the basketball team is a family.
“It comes right into play,” Kelly said. “As soon as somebody says ‘Let’s go do something else,’ it will click that we’ve got a game Thursday, or I think ‘What would Coach Caton say?’ and I know he’d be very upset.”
Second chances
Caton was upset when he came to Aurora Central four seasons ago, but not because he inherited a losing program or had just been let go as coach at George Washington, which he led to the state final in 2001.
Caton was upset with the ways things were at the school, but he and others were bent on changing it.
First came “first-class” uniforms for every level, which Caton says are the best in the state and jokes are nicer than what the Nuggets wear. Open gym in the summer followed. Reaching out to the community and alumni netted sponsorships, food and more attendance at games.
Team pictures include every kid in the basketball program. Caton also introduced a policy of not cutting any player until his senior season, which gave a 5-foot-3 kid such as Luke Salazar a chance to build self-esteem and make friends. Now he sells drinks donated by Caton to the players and gets to keep the loose change.
Four seasons ago, the Trojans didn’t have enough players for two to three teams. Now they have five. When Caton surveys the halls, he’s happy to say “every player that could help the basketball team is on the basketball team.”
The winning came quickly. A season after going 0-18, the Trojans made it to the Sweet 16 in Caton’s first season. They were eliminated on a buzzer-beating tip-in. Next came the first of three undefeated regular seasons, the past two ending in “gut-wrenching” and premature playoff losses.
Led by the basketball team, Aurora Central has won seven league titles in the past four years after going 17 years without any before Caton arrived. Athletic participation is up 30 percent.
“Our goal is to keep them busy and hopefully have them do as well as they can in high school and get a degree so that might move them to the next step,” Caton said.
Senior standout Stephen Franklin, whose brother, Kelvin, was a star two seasons ago, has signed with Colorado State. Franklin and Cunningham run the show. They both can score in bunches at anytime from almost anywhere. The inside game of Kelly, Caston Mabin, Joseph Goyer and Josh Bond has been consistent and potent on both sides of the ball.
A victory tonight over Mullen and another Saturday night would be the Trojans’ first title in boys basketball since 1983. It would be that and so much more.
“We’re just trying to give a positive vibe to this part of Aurora that people think is about gangs and stuff. It’s not,” Franklin said. “If we win a championship, we can change that.”
