Mooseheart Basketball Controversy Part II

1500 people showed up to watch the Hinckley Big Rock Game last night. Picture Jeff Cagel

Many people have contacted me in regards to the Mooseheart Basketball team and our schools hope to be able to play their full team on December 15th. Here is what I know. Earlier in the week, Mooseheart got a court injunction to the IHSA ruling that temporarily allows the three players from Sudan to play. They have since played in two games defeating Westminster Christian on Monday night and losing to Hinckley Big Rock on Wednesday night.

On Monday the case will be reviewed by the full board of the IHSA. Despite what our community feels on the issue and our hope to be able to play their team and make these boys feel welcome in the United States, there is a whole other side to the issue which has nothing to do with these three boys. It is the issue of public schools vs. private schools and the perceived advantages that public schools feel private schools have in winning state championships.

As absurd as many of us in Winnetka who send our children to private schools for reasons that have nothing to do with winning state championships feel this debate is, Illinois is a very large state. In other Illinois communities that do not have such a powerful public school neighbor , the question of competitive equity in state championships especially in the major sports of football and boys basketball is looked at quite differently.

So there will be quite a debate on Monday. The game at Hinckley Big Rock last night was a sell out. Here are two articles from the Sun Times. The first an opinion piece by Mark Brown and the second about last nights game by Erika Wurst and some pictures by Jeff Cagel.

Mooseheart basketball decision ‘wrong-headed’

Somewhere along the way, the Illinois High School Association, the organization that oversees interscholastic athletics in this state, got lost in the weeds of its own bureaucracy.

I couldn’t tell you precisely when this happened, although my impression is that it’s been that way for a while now.

The final confirmation for me came this past week with the IHSA’s decision to prevent three Sudanese boys from playing basketball for tiny Mooseheart school in Batavia.

That decision, which has since been temporarily reversed by a Kane County judge, strikes me as one of the most wrongheaded in a long line of dubious rulings by an organization that never seems to put the best interests of its student-athletes first.

Instead, it clings to some archaic priority of maintaining competitive balance, although anyone familiar with its handling of Public League transfers knows it does a lousy job of that as well.

In the case of Mooseheart, the IHSA is trying to run roughshod over the futures of Mangisto Deng, Akim Nyang and Makur Puou — who came to the school from war-ravaged South Sudan in the summer of 2011 to get an education and play basketball.

Under IHSA rules governing foreign students, the three boys — who happen to measure 6-7, 6-10 and 7-1 — sat out their sophomore seasons while waiting the required 365 days to become eligible.

Now as juniors, they are ready to play, which apparently didn’t sit well with the school’s rivals at neighboring Hinckley-Big Rock High School, who raised a stink with the IHSA about whether those extremely tall Sudanese boys had been improperly induced to enroll at Mooseheart for athletic purposes.

Under IHSA rules, you’re not supposed to transfer from one school to another just to get into a better sports program, although recent history shows it happens all the time and has become practically the norm in basketball since summer AAU programs became dominant.

The implication that Mooseheart has recruited these boys for purposes of creating a basketball powerhouse overlooks the unique history and mission of a very special place, which shows this is not some basketball factory the likes of which the IHSA allows to flourish all over this city and state.

Many of you may have always thought Mooseheart was some little town in the sticks near Aurora.

Actually, the school takes its name from the Loyal Order of Moose fraternal organization that founded the facility in 1913 as an orphanage for the children of its members.

Over the years, the Mooseheart Child City and School, as it is formally known, has evolved into a residential child-care facility for kids in need from infancy through high school. The Moose continue to provide the funding.

Most of Mooseheart’s 210 students come from troubled backgrounds, often involving dysfunctional parents. They live in 30 homes on its cloistered campus, each home organized into a “family” for six to 12 children.

That would seem to be as natural a fit as any for three kids from the Sudan. (Actually, there are four, but the fourth isn’t good at basketball and runs track, which seems to engender less jealousy among competitors.)

I don’t know details about the boys’ impoverished early lives in their home country but I know it isn’t an easy place to live for anybody.

The three Sudanese basketball players are quite open about the fact they hope the sport will help earn them college scholarships, maybe even a shot some day at the NBA, for which they would have been better off enrolling at Simeon, although nobody there is offering free room and board (as far as we know).

But even for a 7-footer, college scholarship opportunities will be few and far between if the IHSA does not allow him to compete in high school and get better.

The IHSA declined to discuss the Mooseheart situation while waiting for a hearing Monday at which the school plans to appeal a staff recommendation that the three players be ruled ineligible. If the school loses, it’s expected to return to court.

Somebody might wonder why the IHSA has jurisdiction in these matters. Simply put, to play in the organization’s sanctioned activities, including the state tournaments, all schools must agree to play by its rules.

According to its mission statement: “The IHSA governs the equitable participation in interscholastic athletics and activities that enrich the educational experience.”

I guess that means they try to make the competition fair. I think they need to rethink their mission to emphasize what’s fair to the students who play their games.

Controversy over Mooseheart’s Sudanese hoops players draws overflow crowd

Hinckley Big-Rock High School Principal Jay Brickman was expecting a crowd for Wednesday evening’s basketball game against Mooseheart, but he wasn’t expecting to turn away a crowd.

An hour before the game started, the gym was at its maximum capacity of 1,500. Fans, media members and others following the controversy over three Mooseheart players from Sudan were turned away.

On Tuesday, Kane County Judge Dave Akemann ruled that the three students — Mangisto Deng, Akim Nyang and Makur Puou — could play and that Illinois High School Association could not make them ineligible before a hearing with the state’s governing athletic body set for next Monday.

The students all came to Mooseheart from Sudan through a small organization called A-HOPE that places African children in American school and home settings.

As the crowd of people who were turned away grew — and grew angry — local law enforcement stepped in to make sure disgruntled spectators stayed in line.

“It’s too bad we came here and weren’t able to support our players,” said Mooseheart fan Dennis Whitmer, whose wife is on staff at the school. “We’re disappointed.”

Mooseheart players from Sudan