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 Part 3 here.
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.
"What are we doing? Are we listening?" he repeats in an effort to keep the group's attention.
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."
The slow climb to change
Daycia McClam bounced around the adults at Madison Park, chatting with coaches and parents and participating in a small Sunday prayer session. McClam is from Buffalo, N.Y., but she's here to help Boston.
McClam is vice president of community and engagement at Positive Coaching Alliance, a national nonprofit dedicated to fostering positive youth sports ecosystems. She previously directed Project Play Western New York, where she helped a seven-county region with zero field hockey teams balloon to 26 programs in a four-year period. But every city is different, which is why she visits Boston twice a month to learn.
"I build relationships throughout the community to identify, one, where are the gaps in participation, and then try and bring and convene stakeholders and leaders together to identify some interventions, or strategies, we can use to attack the barriers that hold those gaps in place," she said.
The first part of McClam's mission is nebulous; there simply isn't much easily-digestible data on the true scale of the inner-city girls participation falloff in basketball. The MIAA has school-by-school high school participation numbers, but they're flawed (Boston Latin Academy, last year's Boston City League girls champions, reported zero participants). She's been working with Dr. Julián Alonso Restrepo, an assistant professor at UMass Boston, calling and surveying the numerous local organizations and camps to pool their participation rates.
The second part is just as important. McClam knows that to create a sustainable future, Boston's leaders need input from all angles: coaches, parents and students included.
"Being very open-minded on what is going to come out of these conversations is a big thing," she said. "Our approach, and my background, is systems change and collective action, so understanding that the issues that we have — we can switch out all the coaches and the issues keep happening. It's a system in place that's going to run no matter who's there. So how do we change the system? That requires multiple people involved."
McClam has identified some of the same symptoms many city coaches have talked about for the dropoff. She noticed girls sports participation rates are down, including in basketball, and some schools are forced to either merge and form co-op teams or fold programs altogether. She sees that varsity-age teenagers are generally not at a varsity skill level, largely because youth skill development wasn't happening. McClam is aware of the lack of Boston city pride in its girls teams, which leads to the best players seeking opportunities elsewhere.
"How do you create the inner-city pride, and how do you also increase the skill level of everyone? You got to give them more access," she said. "We have to have more girls hours — and a basketball 'open gym' does not mean open for girls. That doesn't equate. So having specific girls hours and girls times, and then also leading that into some clear, competitive experiences that really elevate and honor the effort that they're putting into that."
Two years ago, Jeter spearheaded the launch of You Got It Girl, a summer basketball camp for girls at Emmanuel College. She said the program ballooned last summer to include 225 girls from as young as 5 years old. She's not alone; community organizers like Mitch Hercule have taken the lead in running local camps and leagues.
"We're getting them excited and confident about trying a new sport, and being part of a team and just joining that atmosphere," Jeter said. "I think a lot of people are isolated right now still and not knowing how to be social, and these programs are helping to give these kids skills to carry with them."
McCarthy, who ascended to his role as Boston’s chief of students in Jan. 2024, has broadened that work with Jeter. That includes his 6-Won-7 skills sessions at Madison Park. They feature basketball and volleyball, as well as indoor soccer and yoga, and run all day, with specific windows for boys and girls in age groups from 5-16 years old. School tutoring is available on the side. McCarthy says close to 200 girls show up for the sessions.
McCarthy created a co-ed elementary-level basketball league at Emmanuel College. The Emmanuel women's team helps mentor and coach, and in return, the kids make for a better crowd at Saints games. McCarthy is also hoping to start spring leagues. And this isn't just for basketball — flag football, soccer and volleyball are on the table for both boys and girls.
These leagues and events are free to participants. Cost is a major hurdle that can keep a family from getting their child involved with sports.
"The biggest myth around is that the parents don't care," McCarthy said. "That's just a joke. The parents are smart to not have to pay hundreds of dollars that they don't have."
What about the pride part? The small community of girls basketball supporters already show love and loyalty to each other. Cathedral girls basketball, winners of seven MIAA Division 4 state titles in the last 10 years, is a private, Catholic school located in Boston's South End that routinely attracts the best talent from around the city. Its home games draw plenty of fans, including City League coaches who remain proud of their former players who transferred.
The challenge is multiplying that support to the rest of the inner-city schools and sparking interest from the non-Boston-city-hoops lifers. It's not just a Boston problem; nearly every part of the country has struggled at different times with changing narratives around women's sports. McClam looks at Caitlin Clark, whose star power brought swarms of new fans to the WNBA even though the league boasted elite talent for more than two decades.
"Men playing sports is highlighted. Women have to earn it," McClam said. "I played varsity. Me and our boys team went to states the same year. We rode on the same bus. We sat on the bus, and there was a pep rally for the boys."
McCarthy, Jeter, McClam and others are optimistic. They most importantly see a new group of younger adults motivated to make change happen. Even Boston mayor Michelle Wu is aware; she signed the Children's Bill of Rights last November as part of a sweeping initiative to make youth sports more accessible in the city.
Multiple coaches as well as McClam expressed that if a coalition of leaders can bring a unified message to Boston's families, they can get youth sports participation — and indirectly, the City League girls basketball teams — back on the right track.
"You can quote me on this: We are a few, multiple inspired adults away from being where we need to be — to be a yearly threat to win a state championship," McCarthy said.
