AP News, January 24th, 2007
Several hundred fans inside Building No. 47 rose for a standing ovation when a fast-break layup gave the home team a second-half lead. The University of the District of Columbia was giving perennial Division II powerhouse Virginia Union all it could handle.
Members of the student government, wearing black jackets with the gold fire-breathing Firebirds logo, were leaping for joy. The school's president was clapping heartily.
It was an extraordinary sight, given what has happened during the last three years.
In the fall of 2004, UDC president William Pollard disbanded all sports teams for the rest of the school year, a self-imposed death penalty after an investigation uncovered rampant problems with eligibility, recruitment and financial aid. It was a black eye for the only public university in the city.
"The school is always struggling, always struggling for that recognition," assistant track coach Patrice Irby said as she manned her post near the concession stand. "And to have something like that wipe it out, I felt bad for all of the students. I felt bad for the athletes, because sometimes this is their last chance. UDC is always seen as the last-chance school."
A blue ribbon task force was formed. A 59-page report was produced. It recommended that sports resume at UDC only if the programs are properly structured, funded and monitored. The school hired new coaches, a new athletic director, and _ perhaps most importantly _ a full-time compliance officer to make sure NCAA rules would be followed. Sports returned in the fall of 2005.
But while teams can be turned off like a light switch, they don't turn on the same way. When the men's basketball team resumed play, it had only seven players _ four of whom never even played in high school. One was a tennis player who was persuaded to play because he was 6-foot-5. Practices were 3-on-3 because of the lack of manpower.
The team went 1-22.
"The toughest point last season was looking into my teammates' eyes and my coaches' eyes and just not having an answer for them," said point guard Frank Peterson, one of three scholarship players on last year's team. "We left it all on the floor, and at the end of the day, I didn't have an answer for them. I'm not a 40-point-a-night scorer. I'm not a Kobe Bryant. I'm not Michael Jordan. They look to me for a lot of leadership, and that was hard to deal with."
The new coach was local native Julius Smith, who says he "came in and started begging" for the job because he was unemployed and had moved home from New Orleans after losing many of possessions during Hurricane Katrina. He's high-strung _ he gets inches from his players' faces and yells as loud as he can.
But he was, for once, a softy after getting his first victory as a head coach, a 72-61 win over Johnson & Wales four games from the end of last season.
"They thought they won the national championship, I just left them alone," Smith said. "They bought me a cake and sang to me."
But Smith, who had been an assistant at several Division I schools, knows how to recruit. Over the summer, he mined the rich basketball neighborhoods in the area. The entire roster is new this season, except for Peterson and one other player.
"We're rebuilding, kids want to play, so we sold a lot of playing time," said athletic director Harold Merritt, who was hired last year after seven years as AD at the College of Staten Island. "We wound up getting eight, nine, 10 guys who jelled pretty quickly."
UDC has surprised everyone _ including Coach Smith _ with its strong start. Even better, the school's athletes in all sports are averaging a 2.86 grade-point-average. The comeback is nicely timed as the school prepares to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the 1982 team that won the Division II national title.
"It excites everybody around here," Peterson said. "Everybody is happy to see UDC back."
The sports revival is part of an overall turnabout for a commuter university with a checkered history of budget cuts and lack of respect. It doesn't help that campus architecture is as boring as can be _ the big gray buildings have numbers instead of names.
But enrollment has grown to 5,700, and two years ago the law school won a long battle to achieve full accreditation. There's still a final report to turn in to the NCAA, but school officials are hoping the national body will be lenient because UDC discovered, reported and fixed its problems by itself.
The Firebirds couldn't hold the lead against Virginia Union, losing last week's game 74-69. A one-point loss over the weekend dropped the record to 10-6, but Smith's young roster should only get better over the next several years. UDC realizes that, warranted or not, a school's reputation can easily be enhanced or tarnished because of the performance of its sports teams _ and they're welcoming the positive buzz they're getting in the nation's capital.
"It's important that we get our basketball programs back on track," Merritt said. "That can bring back some of that source of pride this university had in the past."
