By Ed Piper
As high school basketball followers know, Boogie Ellis, Mission Bay's star player, de-committed from Duke on May 2 and soon committed to Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway and his program at Memphis.
This is the curiosity of "amateur" basketball: Players move within the system, at the high school and college levels, for all sorts of motivations and through all sorts of means.
Ellis, who helped long-time Buccaneer assistant Marshawn Cherry build a local power on the Mission Bay campus after he became head coach upon Dennis Kane's retirement four years ago, saw that Duke's backcourt didn't have many playing minutes to go around.
What is remarkable is the hot outside-shooting guard was able to break his commitment, receiving a release from his letter of intent to the Blue Devils. Many student-athletes end up in an over-recruited program, and land a place on the bench, later transferring to a school where they have the potential to play more.
In another sport, I think of Bishop's pitcher Shelby Maier, whom I interviewed in Spring 2017, and La Jolla shortstop Josie Sinkeldam, both outstanding players in softball. Maier and her father told me in detail how the University of Georgia had warned her she had to keep up her grades and performance for the next three years (she was only a sophomore at the time) to keep her scholarship offer current.
She expressed a lot of angst over it. You could feel the anxiety and worry.
Maier wanted the opportunity to play at Georgia badly. But she had no guarantee that she would get the opportunity to play once she got there. Georgia, to build its program, might recruit five other equally-capable pitchers, then let competition determine who actually gets on the field during games.
A university can drop its commitment to an athlete, but a student-athlete has few resources to protect him or herself, as we see in these cases.
With Sinkeldam, a strong-fielding, strong-hitting infielder who helped bring La Jolla a CIF Division 3 championship before graduating in 2018, her father Gary accompanied her to many camps and campuses in pursuit of that coveted college scholarship.
She landed a half-scholarship at Cal State Dominguez Hills. She said her rapport with the CSUDH coach and fit for the program were the good points that drew her. But again, on her side, she had to keep up her skills and grades in high school, then face the competition that was surely to come once she enrolled at the university.
The situation offers little security for the student, who is a commodity bartered in the open market of NCAA athletics.
Think piece of meat. What if you get injured? Then, what interest will a program have in you? Not much.
While we're on it, switch to football and Colin Rugg, the All-CIF former quarterback at La Jolla. His family helped him pursue a spot in a Division 1 college program. They found William Jewell College outside Kansas City, Missouri.
He rarely played, and after finding himself still third or fourth on the depth chart at his position after his third season, he dropped out and came back to San Diego to sort out his options and pursue his education. Fortunately, in his case, as in the case of others in this article, he's a good student, so he has a future outside of the sport to build for the future.
When you pursue your dreams, you have to do it within the existing structure. It's not a perfect system. Your progression through the system depends on your performance, luck, the coach, and all sorts of other things.
What if the coach who recruited you leaves the program? That happened in Rugg's case. William Jewell had some tough years in there, and the coach was let go.
Back to Boogie Ellis, he was able to protect himself by getting out of the commitment to Duke, where it was likely he was going to sit, if play at all.
Hopefully, he garners lots of playing minutes for Penny Hardaway, a former NBA star with Shaquille O'Neal. Hardaway returned to his alma mater and is rebuilding the program at Memphis. Maybe it's just the time for Rejean "Boogie" to boogie some more.
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