A high school’s new basketball team may extinguish a Brooklyn institution.
The decades-old Flames youth basketball league has met for league play in the gym at John Dewey High School for the last 20 years, but now the school suddenly says it needs the space on Saturday mornings for its own basketball team, leaving several Flames teams — and nearly 200 youngsters — with nowhere to burn for the second half of the league’s season.
Parents say the sudden snuffing will leave their kids without an affordable way to burn energy.
“My son David has severe ADHD, but when he comes home from basketball, he’s more focused — he’s able to actually sit down and do his homework, which is a big deal for me,” said Gravesender Amy Stahl, whose twin 10-year-olds Lewis and David play in the league and whose husband, Michael, balled for the Flames 20 years ago.
The family is looking for alternatives, but Stahl said even low-cost options are a stretch for her working-class household.
“So we became members of the YMCA. It’s $75 a month for four of us, but its basketball league is $200 plus membership,” said Stahl. “I’m a stay-at-home mom. My husband is a mail carrier, and we’re taking care of my elderly father. We can’t afford that.”
The Flames charges players just $10 a season, and affordability has been part of the mission of the league since its founding in the mid-1970s as a way to bridge racially and economically divided communities in southern Brooklyn, according to the league’s founder.
“We’re the tale of one city — we’ve been bringing poor and middle class kids together literally on the same paying field,” said founder and Gravesend native Gerard Papa. “We were serving the under-served neighborhoods before people knew there were ‘under-served neighborhoods.’ ”
About 20,000 kids have played for the Flames since the league was started by Papa, who has covered most of the costs out of his own pocket, and relied on access to the John Dewey gym for the past two decades.
The teams rent the gym from 9 am to 6 pm on Saturdays and Sundays, Papa said.
But the school recently started its own basketball program within the Public School Athletic League, and now says its teams need the space for weekend practices, putting out almost 200 Flames players midway through their season.
School officials said the High School warned Papa last year that scheduling conflicts may arise.“As we discussed last year, the fact that Dewey now has PSAL sports teams has put increased demand on our facilities and we cannot always guarantee that the space will be available at the times you want it for the Flames,” Dewey’s principal Kathleen Elvin wrote to Papa in an e-mail this paper obtained. “We will continue to juggle our Dewey schedule when possible to accommodate the Flames, but right now there just is not enough gym space to handle all of our needs at the same time.”
The Department of Education mandates that preference goes to public school teams, according to a city spokeswoman.
But Papa is crying foul.
“They can make up reasons why they need the gym, but they don’t need it. The Board of Ed has some good people, but its also full of people who like to throw their weight around,” he said.
This isn’t the first time the Flames have found themselves homeless. The organization hosted games at Most Precious Blood since its inception in the mid-1970s, but after a progressive pastor retired, the new boss gave the team the heave-ho — reportedly over who was playing on the racially mixed teams, according to Papa.
“We had black kids, and it became a damn war,” he said.
Now the Flames have nowhere to finish out the season, which ends in March. And the organization stands to lose $20,000 it sunk into the season if it can’t find a new place to play, Papa said.
“I have no way to accommodate these kids,” he said. “All I care about is running my damn program.”
Anyone wishing to contribute or offer gym space can reach Papa at (718) 236–6100.
