This is Part 2 of a three-part series on the state of Boston City League girls basketball. You can read Part 1 here, and stay tuned for the final installment Friday.
On a Sunday morning in January, inside the Madison Park Vocational High gymnasium, Boston Public Schools' plan for re-energizing youth sports is in the works during a skills camp.
Charlie Mitchell, a former basketball state champion at New Mission High School who played at UMass Boston, leads a group of elementary-age boys through jogs from baseline to baseline.
In a nearby gym down the hallway that belongs to the adjacent John D. O'Bryant School of Mathematics and Science, girls are scrimmaging on multiple volleyball courts. Cory McCarthy patrols both gyms, hugging small children, shaking hands with teenagers and checking in with parents. McCarthy, the BPS chief of students, and Shantell Jeter, manager of special projects, want to return Boston youth sports to prominence with girls basketball as a pillar.
In the last decade, Boston City League girls basketball teams have experienced a decline in statewide success and program participation. Many attribute the falloff to a lack of investment by the city towards getting young girls to love the sport. But leaders like McCarthy and Jeter have a vision.
"As far as a budget standpoint goes, there's always going to be money issues," Jeter said. "But one thing I like to tell folks, especially when I talk to them about programming, is we always have space and we always have kids, and that's usually the biggest part. So we can find the money. We can figure it out."
