Every once and a while someone steps up and does something that warrants acclaim. Larry Merritt is one of those people. Larry Merritt is the head coach of the Bengals basketball squad. The players hail from Roxbury and Dorchester. They are 11 and 12 years old and they are black. They also are national champions, having won the National AAU championship in Kentucky in July. Haven’ t heard much about our national champs? I wonder why?
A few miles away a group of 12 year old Little Leaguers are getting their face time. Those boys from Walpole deserve the attention they get as they were last team standing in New England and now go on to the Little League World Series.
The Bengals deserve some attention too. Mr. Merritt started Merritting Attention, Inc. in 1996. The motto is ” We study before we play.” He is making a difference in the part of Boston that needs it. He scrapes for every penny. The boys who won the championship had to pay a $350 fee in order to participate. It must kill someone as altruistic as Larry Merritt to charge a fee. He knows what is like to be poor, having grown up in Cathedral housing project. Larry Merritt has his priorities. They are the children of Roxbury and Dorchester. Too bad Mayor Menino, Governor Patrick and the rest have different priorities.
I couldn’t agree with you more. This is disgraceful. Even though I’m a conservative, I’m first a child of the inner city and too often whether it’s Roxbury, Lawrence, or Lowell(where I grew up) these inner cities are the butts of jokes or not given credit when due.
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These kids should be proud. Does anybody know how to send a donation their way?
Sure would make ME feel a warm and fuzzy – a team photo with REJECTED emblazoned across the top.
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I wish Red Auerbach were alive – the current Celtic management is too self involved to bother with these kids.
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And really – WHERE is Yancey? Jack Hart? Even Deval? These are NATIONAL champs. And this story is already a few days old.
they are all down the cape I guess.
For your broken bridges, roads, schools, etc.
that a kind of numbing racism is at work here. It is not intentional necesarilly but it is there. For instance, a recent study has shown that even the paragons of impartiality, major league umpires, favor players that share their race. It is this reflexive racism that is at work here with the Bengals. We don’t notice because we don’t care. We do not empathize with those people. That is what they are, those people. Mayor Menino would never say that, but that is what is at his core.
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That does not explain the silence of our governor or local athletes. I will have to ask Ernie to expound on that because it is too tough for me.
…they didn’t get a lot of attention for their triumph.
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What I am surprised at is
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The boys who won the championship had to pay a $350 fee in order to participate.
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Pardon my French, but who in hell charges kids for the privilege of participating in little league? That is positively absurd.
Who the hell charges kids a fee? Everybody. I know plenty of families that scrape and count pennies to get their munchkins in Little League. The official Little League is a top heavy, bloated organization.
…it isn’t the kids who are paying. It’s the steroid-injecting parents that are paying.
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Actually, little league seems to make use of a lot of corporate sponsors, who are actually doing the paying. So you have kids who are wearing the ads for the sponsors. “Tom’s TV Service.” “Phiser Pharmaceuticals” You get the idea.
because no corporation, sports team, multimillion dollar earning athlete or governmental agency has stepped up and funded Merritt’s program. Who pays for the gym time, the uniforms, the equipment, transportation, insurance, etc.? The kids do, with their fees. They did get new sneakers from Woburn Foreign Motors though, which is good.
Despite what you may have heard, this team did NOT win the National Championship. I know after all you’ve read the last few days, that seems hard to believe, so I will repeat it again. This team DID NOT win the National Championship. The National Champion is the Arkansas Mustangs. This team went to a Division 2 Tournament, the equivalent of the N.I.T., and are trying to capitalize on a chance to make people feel bad for them by making it sound like they won the actual national tournament.
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Making it worse, they won the Massachusetts state championship and qualified for the (Div 1) National Championships; berths go to the top 6 teams in Massachusetts (and even more teams in bigger states). However, despite that, they declined the berth and chose instead to attend the D2 Tournament. This is a tournament designed 2-3 years ago by AAU for 2 reasons 1) to give teams that aren’t good enough to make the nationals a chance to travel to a tournament somewhere. 2) to make more money, which is a key component of the good people at AAU National Headquarters.
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The teams that go to D2 Nationals aren’t very good, as evidenced by the fact that MABC’s 1st three wins were by 42, 31, and 44 points. Considering that there were 98 teams at the (D1) Nationals, that means legitimately this team is 99th in the country, not 1st. This is like West Virginia winning the NIT and then calling themselves National Champions!! But at least they couldn’t go to the NCAA’s, its not like they earned a berth and rejected it to try and beat everyone in a weaker tournament.
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Many in the local AAU community were perplexed at why a state champion team would forego a National Championship berth to go to a weak D2 tournament. Now we see the answer, to win a tournament against easier teams and then self-promote and call attention to themselves. Don’t buy into this sham. There are legitimate teams out there like BABC, Metro Boston, Bay State Magic. They have played in the real National Championships and have earned their recognition and sponsorships. This team did not do the same thing.