Dunking The Civic Dream: Bringing Hoops Back To The Wood
As Lakewood’s athletic youth enter their third summer without outdoor basketball courts, a movement is underway that shows promise of delivering a trial outdoor court by the middle of the summer, 2010. The Lakewood Outdoor Basketball Committee (LOBC), founded in 2009, has dedicated itself to the realization of this goal.
Once swarming hives of athletic activity, Lakewood’s outdoor basketball courts were disabled in 2007 when Cleveland and most of her inner-ring suburbs removed their hoops in response to neighborhood complaints that the courts had become hot-spots of vandalism, littering, fighting, and a host of other anti-social behaviors. In Lakewood, leaders received similar complaints; anti-social behavior was disrupting the good order within the neighborhoods abutting courts. The response by both the George administration and the School Board was swift and surgical. By the end of the summer, hoops were removed from all outdoor courts on both City of Lakewood and Board of Education properties in a quick fix to a complex problem.
Dr. Ernest Dezolt, a specialist on juvenile delinquency and associate professor of Sociology at John Carroll University questioned the feasibility of the 2007 solution. “If you want short-term results, you take down the hoops. However, for this to work you must beef up security in other places and create more viable solutions for the displaced kids,” said Dezolt.
Citizens began asking similar questions and it didn’t take long for the innocent players, their parents, mentors and advocates to begin organizing against this blanket prohibition. “Most parents feel that the hoops were just taken from the kids of Lakewood without being given an opportunity to voice their opposition,” said Stephanie Toole, energetic mother of seven and LOBC co-founder. While in the post-Youth Master Plan era, a sense of responsibility for the total health and development of Lakewood’s children still lacks a prudent theory and practice, Lakewood’s grassroots tradition of strong child and community advocacy has risen to the challenge of finding a way.
The LOBC’s vision is not powered by naïve, nostalgic hopes of returning to the past, they’re keenly aware of the need to bring social order to a resurgent outdoor basketball scene in Lakewood. They understand the complexity of the situation and have listened intently to the concerns of fellow neighbors. LOBC’s chief protest is against the surgical process employed, a solution that took place without public input or open discussion and the damage done to the image of the sport. Removal of hoops throughout the region has not only stigmatized the sport, it has unintentionally displaced lawful residents who must leave the city to play pick-up games at outdoor courts elsewhere.
The crisis of social order on Lakewood’s outdoor courts raises broader questions of the state of civil society. And crisis is the name of the game. In an era marked by economic collapse and ethical deficits in business and government leadership, social capital-- or the ability of people to join together in relationship to community-- is in short supply. In "Moral Order and Social Disorder: The American Search for Civil Society", sociologist, Frank Hearn, chronicles the collapse of communitarian interdependencies in late 19th century America. According to Hearn, social control over anti-social behavior happens when individuals cultivate “Effective ongoing communitarian interdependencies that feed trust, reciprocity, and sense of mutuality on which rest responsible neighborhoods.”
LOBC, true to the grain of the Lakewood civic tradition, is an exemplar of this spirit of citizenship. Over the past year the group has worked closely with the City of Lakewood, local churches, the Friends of Madison Park, elected officials and others to build the critical mass of intelligence and enthusiasm needed to dunk their civic dream in a manner addressing the complexities of the issues. According to Mayor Ed FitzGerald, “They understand that security concerns need to be addressed, and that the hoops must be in a visible area. They know that they need to be part of the solution due to the limited finances of the city.” And LOBC has done their homework. “Much of the research we have done with basketball courts focused on the liveliness of each park. Where basketball courts are successful, and there are many in Northeast Ohio, the court is in the center of the park, in clear view of foot traffic and police,” said Nadhal Eadeh, LOBC co-founder.
Eadeh and other members of LOBC see outdoor courts as a piece of the larger athletics puzzle. “We are missing the positive impact that outdoor hoops had on the sports program as a whole. It seems as if Lakewood’s recreation leaders are not in the business of winning at the high school level anymore, and that fact is not unrelated to the anti-sports message that we send when we remove outlets for self-directed athletic development in our city’s parks.”
Eadeh alludes to a much broader issue. With the locking of the newly remodeled baseball field at Harding and the limiting of basketball options to indoor, pay-to-play venues such as the Lakewood YMCA, there is a movement toward exclusivity and privatization that marginalizes those lacking the resources to participate.
In addition, available fee-based options are in short supply or of questionable quality, according to LOBC. Open gyms at the Lakewood YMCA have consistently reached capacity. “We have a higher demand for basketball than we can accommodate,” says Paul Rogerson, Program Director for the Lakewood YMCA. The open gym sessions at public schools present other issues. Stephanie Toole complains that they “are filled with bigger kids and it just is not wise or safe for younger kids to go and play after school.”
The LOBC trial sessions will provide a free, outdoor alternative to the fee-based, indoor options that the city’s youth are currently afforded. Working with the City of Lakewood, they have identified several potential locations for a trial outdoor half-court in which the hoop will be functional only during monitored sessions, staffed by LOBC volunteers. This plan resonates with Dezolt, who has noted that, “The literature and research suggests that more supervised sports will lead to a more successful impact because you are engaging kids in more constructive activities that will foster positive grown in [their] development.”
With youth increasingly moving toward the atomizing technologies of social networking and mass media as sources of identity and self-hood, it should be considered a civic sin to withhold opportunities for competitive play under the summer sun in the fresh air. Or, as Stephanie Toole said, “it will just be criminal to go another summer without a safe place for our kids to play ball outside.”
The city and other partners seem to be in agreement. With the civic spirit as their guide, LOBC will continue to build the communitarian interdependencies needed to bring back outdoor basketball courts in Lakewood. For more information or to join their efforts, please visit http://lobc.org.