CATCHING UP ON MOUNT VERNON
School district still raising money, Sherrod Wright update
by Raymond Balter
Sports – especially basketball- has become an integral and deeply important part of the social and cultural fabric of Mount Vernon, NY. Since being faced with a budget crisis that threatened to eliminate all sports from the city’s public schools, the response from the Mount Vernon community and beyond, has - to borrow a phrase normally used in courtrooms - proven this beyond a reasonable doubt. Fall sports are underway in the Westchester County city, and if fundraising efforts continue at the same pace, winter and spring sports will be as well.
After two budget proposals were voted down last spring, the school board, in an effort to cut expenditures, decided to eliminate all sports. In order to continue, sports at Mount Vernon, they would need the $950,000 necessary for their survival to come from outside sources. So far, fundraising efforts have been quite successful. Of course, it helps greatly that the Mount Vernon mayor, Clinton Young, was a former track athlete in the school district.
Obviously deeply committed, he began a fundraising initiative called Save Our Sports (with the perfect acronym, SOS). Mayor Young knew immediately that two people who needed to be called for help were two of Mount Vernon’s most famous native sons: actor Denzel Washington and the city’s latest contribution to the NBA, current Chicago Bull Ben Gordon. Neither wasted any time in helping.
Washington donated $100,000, while Gordon set up a charity event called Ben’s Bowling Bash and Celebrity Fundraiser, which included such things as corporate sponsorship to buy lanes. Gordon’s efforts also included enlisting the help of several NBA players: former UConn teammates Emeka Okafor and Charlie Villaneuva, and another Westchester County product, Peekskill’s Elton Brand.
The contributions of Washington and Gordon have been invaluable, but it has been the not so wealthy and famous in Mt Vernon that have kept the efforts going and allowed it to succeed. Current Men’s Varsity Basketball Coach Bob Cimmino has said that the response from the city’s residents to the crisis has been overwhelming: “This would have been a devastating thing for the entire city,” he said, “and the people of Mt Vernon have been very sympathetic.”
“The kids on the team would be out every day on the streets with their tin cans seeking donations from motorists,” Cimmino said. “We would have fundraisers three to five days a week,” he said, adding that “It’s been a very time-consuming summer,” Cimmino said that with the school year now underway, fund-raising activities have decreased in frequency, but they’re still very much continuing. “The kids still go out a few days a week, and we have cocktail parties, walk-a-thons, we’re soliciting corporate sponsorship,” he said.
So far things have gone well, as football is now underway. Cimmino stated that the effort is an ongoing one that will have to continue in order to ensure that winter and spring sports also survive. Considering the storied history of Mount Vernon basketball, imagining the city without it does seem like a rather hard thing to do. I asked Coach Cimmino, who has been varsity coach for the last 14 years (and JV coach the 5 years prior), about the history of Mount Vernon, and when it happened that the program began to emerge as a powerhouse.
He said it began probably around 1963, when the two high schools in town merged into one. I asked him who the first big basketball star that he could recall from the city was, and he said it was probably a man named Bill Pleas. I told him that I would look him up, as I never heard of him. I found a couple of things about him on the ‘net, like that he apparently played for the Detroit Pistons, but THIS might be the most interesting (scroll down a little to the comments).
Indeed, Ben Gordon is merely the latest NBA product from a city that has produced its share of them, and seems to send players to Division 1-A programs virtually every year. The alumni list from Mt Vernon is an impressive one, as in addition to Pleas, some other Mount Vernon alum that have played in the NBA are Gus and Ray Williams, Rudy Hackett, Earl Tatum, Carlton (Scooter) and Rodney McCray, and Lowes Moore.
That’s in addition to D-I players like just-graduated Pitt guard Keith Benjamin, current UMass starting point guard Chris Lowe, Mike Coburn and Jonathan Mitchell, both at Rutgers, and West Virginia’s highly touted freshman Kevin Jones. Then there is the current Mt Vernon senior with multiple D-1 offers, Sherrod Wright. I asked Coach Cimmino about him, and not surprisingly, he was not short on superlatives.
“He’s an outstanding student-athlete,” he said. “He’s a very hard worker who plays small forward for us and will play two-guard in college. His perimeter game is developing nicely, and he has his own high-wire act. Right now he has offers from Xavier, Georgia Tech, Virginia and Providence, and he’s being shown a lot of interest from Oregon and Cincinnati.”
As for when he might decide, Cimmino said that “right now he’s happy with what he sees. I think he’d like to get it out of the way in November, but if things don’t work out then he’ll just wait till the spring and blow up more.”
Anyone interested in helping Mt Vernon athletics can make a tax-deductable donation to:
501C3
Mt Vernon Educational Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 476, Fleetwood Station
Mt Vernon, NY
10552