Flint, Michigan, once a center of high school basketball prominence, is searching for footing.
There was a time—not long ago—when you couldn’t turn on the news or read a newspaper without seeing/reading about Flint, Michigan. The water became toxic (iron was the culprit) soon after those in charge switching the city’s water supply to the polluted Flint River. Saving money was the goal.
But as we all know, news stories have a short half-life—even a terrible story like Flint’s—so you may not be reading/hearing much about Flint these days. But what happened there didn’t go away. It’s happening.
Cities in crisis share a familiar storyline. One thing leads to another, and things start cascading, things like a major employer closing shop, a hospital closing, and residents leaving town. When those things happen, people stop asking, “When is this going to end?” and start screaming, “I can’t take this anymore!” Hope turns to despair.
What’s happening to Flint’s sports scene may seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things. While in many ways, that’s true, in one way, it’s not. Sports has a significant meaning for people in distress. It gives them something to rally around and cheer.
Courtesy: ArcGIS StoryMaps
That’s why I was especially interested in reading an article published last week in The Bridge (a Michigan-focused public policy periodical). Written by the University of Michigan’s Lane Kizziah, the headline read, “Flint, once home to legendary basketball teams, is now down to one.”
High school basketball, you see, is a casualty of what’s happening in Flint.
“In the early ’80s…the population of Flint hovered around 160,000,” writes Kizziah. “In 1980, the median income for young workers in Flint was over $54,120 in 2018 dollars—higher than the median income of young workers in San Francisco. General Motors employed around 80,000 people. /But today/…the population has nosedived roughly 40% to 97,000…and GM…has fewer than 7,000 employees there. The median income is half that of the state as a whole ($26,330). 41.2% live at or below the poverty line, triple the national average.”
A city, which once had four high schools, now has one. The numbers say why. According to Michigan Department of Education data that Kizziah reports, Flint’s school enrollment has declined over 80% in the past two decades—from over 20,000 students enrolled in 2000-01 to fewer than 4000 students in the school system today.
‘Flintstones” Bell (l), Peterson (c), and Cleaves (r0
That’s not just an academic story; it’s a basketball story, too. For years, as GM kept Flint’s cash registers ringing, Flint’s high schools put the city on the map. Four high schools produced an assembly line of star college/NBA players, the likes of Terry Furlow, Jeff Grayer, Eric Turner, Glenn Rice, Trent Tucker, and Miles Bridges. Three local stars—Mateen Cleaves, Morris Peterson, and Charlie Bell, who became known as ‘The Flintstones,’ led nearby Michigan State University to the 2000 NCAA national championship. Their Flint partner, Antonio Smith, paved their way to East Lansing.
Today, three of those basketball-rich high schools are closed—Flint Central (Turner), Flint Northern (Furlow and former Michigan coach, Bill Frieder), and Flint Northwestern (Rice). Flint Southwestern (Bell and Bridges) is all that’s left—enrollment 474.
The closings took history with them. Kizziah quotes a local who “remembers when 5000 spectators would come for a game between Central and Northern — the biggest rivalry in the city. There would be so many fans, and they couldn’t play in their gyms; they’d have to play at the city-operated 7,000-seat IMA Auditorium. But Central and Northern are gone, and so is the Auditorium (torn down).”
In Flint, “it (basketball) was a culture, a community, a religion,” Kizziah concludes. “It was a moment when the world stopped and stared.”
Nobody knows how bad things would have gotten if Flint’s water hadn’t been poisoned. Data tell us that Flint was in decline when the water source was switched.
And even though ‘those glory days’ are over, a new version of Flint’s basketball success may be written. One high school can make it so.
If that happens, Flint’s people will make it happen. And it will be our turn to cheer.
