Ballin' in the Brook: Recreational basketball thrives in hoops hotbed

Mountain Brook Junior High School hosted a big basketball game Nov. 16.

At 9:40 that morning, the Texas Tech Red Raiders played the Duke Blue Devils in the school’s old gymnasium.

And that was just the start of a hoops-filled Saturday on which the North Carolina Tar Heels faced the Michigan State Spartans and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish battled the Michigan Wolverines.

Blueblood programs were well-represented during the opening weekend of the 2019-20 Mountain Brook Athletics recreational basketball season. In two days of mid-November madness, close to 100 games took place in gyms across the city.

Each of Mountain Brook’s six public schools, along with the Levite Jewish Community Center and Mountain Brook Baptist Church, open their courts to MBA rec basketball from November to February. Collectively, they accommodate the more than 1,300 boys and girls in grades one to 12 who register for the league.

“When you look at the population of the city, I mean, you’re talking 6 or 7% of the population of Mountain Brook is playing rec basketball,” said David Malone, who is in his second year of commissioning the boys league. “That’s just a staggering number. You extrapolate that to any larger metropolitan area, I mean, you’re talking about 15,000 youth basketball players in the city of Birmingham or something.”

The registration numbers underscore basketball’s popularity in Mountain Brook, which has developed its reputation as a hoops hotbed. Much of that brand building has been driven by Bucky McMillan and his varsity boys team at Mountain Brook High School.

The Spartans have won five of the past seven state championships in Alabama’s highest classification and finished the 2018- 19 season ranked fifth nationally by USA Today. That team was headlined by Trendon Watford, a McDonald’s All-American now starring at LSU.

“I think any time you have success at the high school level, it only makes those that are younger aspire to do things like that,” said Brad Hart, MBA’s executive director since 1993.

Hart has seen Mountain Brook’s rec basketball program grow substantially through the years. According to MBA participation data he provided, the program registered 925 kids in 1996-97 compared to 1,325 in 2019- 20. Participation peaked in 2017-18, when 1,349 players signed up.

And while the high school’s preeminence deserves at least partial responsibility for drawing kids to the game, particularly in recent years, MBA officials say it’s the program’s emphasis on sportsmanship and participation that keeps them coming back.

They want kids to enjoy themselves as they get acquainted with the sport.

“What makes it successful is we’re intentional about ensuring that we don’t separate the best players from those who are learning the game at any point until they make the seventh-grade or eighth- or ninth-grade school team,” Malone said, “and at that point, you’re forbidden from playing rec basketball.”

MBA commissioners and coaches construct teams to create a level playing field in each grade. According to Malone, a perfect year means parity, with no teams left winless or undefeated at the end of the season.

That can be a difficult task when assigning 871 boys and 454 girls to different squads, as it did this year, but it’s one that MBA takes seriously. At the end of each draft, those gathered ask themselves if they’ve constructed even teams.

“You want to ensure the championships aren’t won on draft night,” Malone said.

In MBA, every grade has a league for each gender, with second and third grades boasting the highest registration numbers.

This year, there are 16 second-grade and 17 third-grade teams on the boys side, along with 11 second-grade and 12 third-grade teams on the girls side. Rosters traditionally consist of seven players who receive near equal playing time, as MBA enforces strict participation rules.

“There’s not going to be someone who plays four quarters and someone that plays one,” Hart said. “Most of the leagues, especially up through about sixth grade, you have to play.”

Grade levels merge once players reach the junior high. MBA has one league for girls in grades seven to 12 and three leagues for boys in the same age range. There are leagues for seventh, eighth and ninth and 10th to 12th grades.

Not all of those were around when Malone and Michael Seale, an MBA referee for the past three decades, were coming through the rec program. Hart said MBA added a high school boys league in 2014-15 and a combined junior high and high school girls league in 2007-08.

“When we were in junior high, if you didn’t make the school team, you didn’t play basketball,” Seale said. “I mean, that was it, and you stopped playing basically unless you played in a church league or something.”

Seale will referee more than a dozen games — lasting about a dozen hours total — on any given Saturday during the rec basketball season. He works primarily with second- and third-graders who are learning about basketball.

Even so, Seale said he makes a point to tell the volunteer coaches whose games he officiates that their objective isn’t just to teach kids how to play; it’s to get them to love to play.

Passion engenders commitment, and commitment breeds success.

“I think it’s one of those things where, basketball-wise, the more you learn at an early age, typically that helps you later on,” Hart said.

At the high school, McMillan has noticed increased talent matriculating through his community’s basketball pipeline. He attributes local youth leagues, including MBA, and other skill development opportunities, such as his Buckyball Academy, for the boost. Its results surface annually in the deft ball-handlers, capable shooters and defensive hounds who arrive on campus.

“I tell people that we like to play a lot of players,” he said, “but I don’t play players just to play them. I play them because they can play.”

McMillan fell in love with basketball while growing up in Mountain Brook, and it brings him joy to see how valued the sport has become in his hometown. He knows many of the kids who show up for state championship games bedecked in neon T-shirts aspire to one day play for him.

Their first goal, however, is to punch their ticket to Spartan Arena, site of MBA’s league championship games in mid-February. After marching through the regular season and playoffs, two remaining teams in each grade square off for the top prize.

The title game could pit Red Raiders against Blue Devils or Tar Heels against Spartans. But in the eyes of MBA leaders, the outcome of the matchups are far less consequential than the experiences themselves.

“When it comes down to it,” Malone said, “your real championship is how many kids come back the next year.”

And in that case, MBA is a perennial winner.