Champion high school basketball team without a gym

ON DEC. 8, the young men of the Mathematics, Civics and Sciences Charter School's basketball team are slated to play their first game of the season at their home gym.

The problem is, they don't have a home gym. Or any gym.

For the past five years, the charter school, on Broad Street near Buttonwood across from the School District of Philadelphia headquarters, has paid $1,200 a month to use the gym at the Berean Institute, a barber school at Girard Avenue near 19th Street.

Before that, the team used gyms at a YMCA and Salvation Army, among other buildings, because the school - which is housed in a former printing plant - does not have its own gym.

The kids never complained that their team - which won the PIAA Class A championships in 2011 and came in as runner-up last year - didn't have a homecourt at their school. The Mighty Elephants were just happy to have a team and a place to play.

But when the Berean building was purchased this summer, the school was told it could no longer use the building's gym, said Veronica Joyner, founder and chief administrative officer of MCSCS.

Joyner has reached out to other institutions in the area to see if the team could rent out their gym for two hours a day this year, but she's had no luck.

Now, she worries not only about how the team will practice and perform, but whether the lack of a facility could prevent some of the students - 84 percent of whom come from low-income homes - from receiving scholarships to college when it comes time for scouting season.

"The children are asking me, 'What are we going to do?' " Joyner said, through tears. "It hurts me that these children need something that I can't give them."

When Joyner founded MCSCS in 1999, she envisioned it as an all-academic school.

"At that time, I didn't have a dream of a basketball team," she said.

Dan Jackson, the school's head basketball coach, came to MCSCS as an eighth-grader the year the charter school opened in 1999. By his sophomore year, in 2002, the boys at the school had persuaded Joyner to allow them to form a basketball team.

"We pressured Ms. Joyner every day," Jackson said. "Every day we told her how bad we wanted it."

Since the boys and girls basketball teams were created, Joyner said, about 20 MCSCS students have attended college on basketball scholarships.

Many of the boys on this year's team have dreams of getting scholarships, too, so they're practicing on their own whenever and wherever they can.

"They've been trying to be resourceful because we haven't been able to get together," Jackson said. There is space to build a gym in one of the two parking lots behind the school and Joyner has even had schematics drawn up. The project is estimated to cost $3 million, but Joyner thinks she can do it for half of that, "without the fringe benefits."

She said she's applied for grants and has written letters to large companies asking them to sponsor the gym, all to no avail. Joyner said crowdfunding the project is her next step.

In the meantime, this year's team needs a gym. Yesterday.

"We just want a place to practice and play," said Saheed Peoples, a 17-year-old point guard.

Darrin Manning, a 17-year-old old shooting guard, said if the team doesn't find a gym, they'll still play their games - even if they have to do so each time on their opponent's turf.

"We are all a family, so nobody's going to quit," Manning said.

Painted in large, bold letters above one of the hallway arches at the charter school are the words "Failure is not an option."

Nobody has taken that more to heart than the students on the school's basketball team.

"Even though we're a little school with limited resources, they still realize that we can overcome the odds, make an impact and be successful," Jackson said of his players.

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