Brian Butler, the recreation coordinator at the Springhill Lake Recreation Center, was talking about the kids who play basketball there every afternoon. Then the phone rang. The hand signals said, “Wait, I have to take this.” The note he passed over told the story: “NBA Agent for one of my guys.”
His guys are still “his guys (and girls),” long after their Rec Center days. Not many get agents or make it to the NBA. But the SHL Center, located on the edge of Franklin Park, has a remarkable track record of successes. Six Rec ballplayers went to the Big Dance (NCAA basketball playoffs) in March:
- Naji Marshall – Xavier University
- Kaila Charles – University of Maryland
- Ishmail Jabbie – UMBC
- Ed Polite, Jr. – Radford University
- Stan Robinson – University of Rhode Island
- Byron Hawkins – Murray State University
- Tiwian Kendley, who went from Eleanor Roosevelt High School to Morgan State, finished his season as the second leading scorer in the U.S.
- Octavia Wilson, from ERHS to the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, was named Conference USA F r e s h m a n o f the Week three times last season.
Butler and Recreation Coordinator Frank Jones also bring back Rec Center alums like Darnell Dodson, who has played professionally i n A r g e n t i n a and Mexico, to coach and mentor Rec Center players during spring basketball clinics.
Butler credits his father with teaching him to box as a way of instilling discipline. “But basketball,” he says, was his “way up, out of the neighborhood and into a larger world that included college.” After Delaware State and an unsuccessful tryout for the Portland Trailblazers, there was a teaching job in the Alternative Learning Center at the Greenbelt Middle School. At the time, Butler lived in the Springhill Lake Apartments (now Franklin Park) and would walk with students to school. In 2000, a part-time position at the Springhill Lake Recreation Center turned into the job he does today.
Although the thunk of basketballs is what most people notice right away, Rec Center successes are not just about basketball. Sports are a vehicle for other life lessons, too. Jones, particularly, makes the point that the goal is to be a scholar-athlete, not an athlete-scholar. What about the future, though? Butler has led a young fathers program, Hip Hop Fathers, short for Having an Invested Presence Helps Our Fathers. “Presence is the key for men and boys,” he said. He’d like to do that again to explore fatherhood in all walks and styles. He’d like to see more arts programs, a Step Team, a Drill Team and a parade through the Franklin Park community that celebrates its rich cultural diversity. The parade could easily lead to the Rec Center.
Even today, on the Rec Center campus, there may be Double Dutch or a demonstration of how to make bicycle-powered smoothies. There are ESOL classes for adults in the little Club House building in the front and a thermophilic composting project in the side parking lot. In the grassy field behind the center there is a children’s playground and a Chesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society (CHEARS) Three Sisters Garden, to name only a few of the present activities. For further information about activities at the Springhill Lake Recreation Center, visit their web site by clicking here.
