Hoops and Tough Love with Coach Senior, by Craig Giammona
Coach Mike Senior puts his players through the paces during a practice session in Bedford Stuyvesant. A coach for more than 50 years, senior uses a tough love approach to teach hard work and discipline as he molds better basketball players and teaches skills that carry over into the classroom.
“This is a skilled game, asked Dr. Naismith, this is a skilled game”
“Right hand, left hand, middle, left foot forward, right foot forward
“I came up in Brownsville, which is tough neighborhood, still now today. Ivsaw how many of these kids love basketball, they love the sport of basketball. and If they can utilize some of the bad things the that happen in the hood and put it into a positive and then work on their game and school, i figured out, i said they can make it, the can get out.”
“Theres two things they have do: stay out of trouble, go to school, take care of your academics and work on your game and you’ll go to college for free, it’s so easy.”
“it’s everything, it’s everything. everything. getting a scholarship, and to the families, a lot of families don’t have anything, they don’t have much. they really don’t. They can’t pay for a kid to college. So if you get a scholarships, that means you really worked on both ends. academics and sports.
“How many you got? How many you got?
One more you get water, 15 is water and rest”
“My mother was from South Carolina, the one thing she wanted to do was make sure we had solid discipline to live in the world and to have an education to deal with everybody, not just one group of people. if you don’t have discipline it’s not going to work.
it’s all about how strong you can be as a man. grow up to be a man and be strong. Along the way if you become really strong as a person, you’ll make it and you’ll be able to get your scholarship, because there’s thousands and thousands of kids not working on their game.
“Five more for you, five more for you…. since you can’t feel your arms.”
I met Mike Senior back in the fall at a senior center in Fort Greene, where he was being honored at a “grandparents breakfast.” He was there to receive an award. I was there to get an interview with Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who at the time was a few weeks away from being elected to Congress. I chatted briefly with Senior after the event and made plans to visit one of his practices. It was weeks before I actually visited a practice, but since then I’ve been back more than 10 times, always transfixed by how Senior interacts with his players. In this age of coddling young people, Senior brings a tough love approach from a different era. And it’s amazing to see how the players respond.
Born and raised in Brownsville, Senior has been coaching basketball for more than 50 years. His tough love approach has survived into 2013 as he uses values like hard work and discipline to mold better basketball players and, more importantly, better students. Senior uses basketball to connect with young players, but puts an emphasis on education. He’s sent kids to the NBA, but is prouder of the kids who have used his training sessions to earn college scholarships. To him, basketball is a means to getting a free education. To him, it’s a simple education: a good player with good grades will go to college. And for some of his kids, it might be their only shot at higher education. Senior says it used to make him physically ill to learn that one of his players was selling drugs, or hanging out late and getting into trouble. And over the years, he’s lost plenty of kids to the streets. These days, he’s focused on the players who want to work hard, the kids who can handle his tough approach and understand what he’s trying to accomplish. Senior offers three practices a week during the school year and during the summer runs a program that meets at 6 a.m. in a park in Clinton Hill. His standards are demanding, but that’s just his way of identifying the players who truly want his help.
