Letters from my players in prison

Correspondences with players I coached who are now behind bars.

The team started with 17 players in November. By February, we were down to eight. Two quit. Seven went to jail. One of them committed a murder, another 1st degree assault, a grand theft auto, a couple of big drug charges.

It all shocked me and they all wrote to me.

I grew up ten miles from where they did. I had two acres, a pool and a basketball hoop in my driveway. They lived in duplexes, often moved houses unexpectedly and had relatives serving life sentences.

Tony came to our school because what he did - the crime he committed - was so bad that the district expelled from both of the public high schools in his home city. He avoided jail, though, because he was young, and he landed at the charter school where I worked. It was his last chance to play high school basketball.

He’s the most talented kid I ever coached, and he had a confident, cool and calm way about him. I once bailed him out of jail at 3am.

A few years and a few crimes later, we correspond through letters he writes from prison.

Fairfield County is the most divided part of the United States. We have the highest income gap between neighboring towns, and the highest academic achievement gap, as well. My life and the life of my players attests to the vastly different trajectories between kids who live less than a mile apart.

I lasted one season with this team and school. I headed for a neighboring town immediately after, where I became the varsity coach for the affluent. Those kids’ problems were similar to the boys from the charter school, but their environments were, well, dissimilar.

These letters are the backbone of stories to come. They will shock you, too.