Scam-dunk: High-priced ‘tournament’ takes advantage of college hopefuls
Tuesday, July 14, 2009, 5:57 PM
Print
Comment
For one city high school basketball player, the acceptance letter seemed like a dream come true.
In May, he had traveled to State College, Pa., and proved his skill in a regional tryout at Penn State. Now, weeks later, he’d been selected – from a nationwide talent pool, he was told – to compete in an international tournament that’s scheduled to begin on July 27 in Champaign, Ill. The organizers of the event, called USA Junior Nationals, were promising a can’t-miss opportunity to grab one of the sport’s most coveted prizes.
“There are over 400 basketball scholarships that you are potentially eligible for through interactions with our staff,” they said in the letter, which was mailed to would-be participants in early June. “Consider that you will be working with college coaches who each have 12-15 scholarships to offer. Every year, there are athletes who leave the tournament with a scholarship in their hand.”
The player’s mother called the Daily News last month, requesting that the good news about her son be documented and noted that he had attained the honor while playing high school ball in the lowly PSAL ‘B’ division. “This just proves that if you work hard, good things can happen for you,” she said at the time.
Across the country, hopeful youngsters and their parents were being lured by the same promises.
In places like Leesville, La.; Osceola, Iowa; Zebulon, N.C., and East Wenatchee, Wash., newspapers printed – nearly verbatim – a canned description of the “prestigious” event, copped from a press release written by USA Junior Nationals organizers. Some of the newspaper articles noted that the families could use help shouldering the cost of the camp.
A separate page in the camp’s enrollment packet listed “financial responsibilities” that included $350 for registration, $225 for a uniform, $15 for mandatory insurance and more than $400 in “optional” expenses, including room and board for the week, the cost of traveling to and from Illinois and a $60 fee for parents who attend.
“It takes a village to raise one child,” said the mother of the player from New York, describing the enthusiasm with which relatives and friends who chipped in to help enable her son to make the trip. “I thought it was incredible how this community came together and really tried to get him there.”
Their story is shared by thousands, those who dream of playing on a higher stage but have little understanding of the super-stratified universe of youth basketball. The USA Junior Nationals tournament provides a glimpse of those who would prey on the hopes of these players and parents, offering them an alluring – if bogus – road to a basketball pedigree.
The mother’s enthusiasm has since soured, and although she furnished copies of the tournament’s registration materials and spoke candidly about her experience, she asked that her name, and her son’s, be withheld from this story.
In late June, she sent $400 to secure her son’s spot in the week-long event. Last week, she said, program organizers notified her that they needed to receive the balance quickly, or her son would be removed from the roster and she would forfeit her initial payment.
The program’s carefully worded documents implied that players were being offered entry into a select group, but the mother came to understand that USA Junior Nationals is open to anybody who can pay their way. “You’re anxious when you get the (acceptance) letter,” she said. “You’re excited, so you don’t see all those words.”
***
When the USA Junior Nationals International Sports Festival kicks off in little less than two weeks, at the University of Illinois, this much will be difficult to miss: The event will provide less than the promised level of instruction and competition, and a slim chance that any of the 160 boys and girls who were registered by last week will walk away with a scholarship.• Several players who competed in USA Junior Nationals in previous years characterized it as a loosely supervised scrimmage, and suggested that would-be participants save their money.
• A member of the NCAA basketball event certification staff, Adam Morrissey, said that the event is not among those approved by the college sports governing body, thereby prohibiting Division I and II coaches from attending.
• More than a dozen college coaches and recruiting experts queried for this story said they’d never attended USA Junior Nationals. “I’ve never heard about that in my life; I don’t know anything about that at all,” said Howie Garfinkel, who has been one of the country’s top recruiting experts for more than 30 years.
• According to the Better Business Bureau, the nomadic company has a history of state hopping, and last year it drew scrutiny from the FBI.
The program’s director blanched when confronted with these charges, telling the Daily News that his event was not meant to help athletes obtain scholarships and adding that he was unaware of the assertions contained in the program materials.
“Our main goal is for competition,” said George Blue, the director. “(Kids) are all interested in scholarships, of course, (but) we’re not a recruiting service.” Blue was unable to estimate the number of participants who receive scholarships.
“We thought about sending a questionnaire to a lot of colleges (about scholarships), but that would jeopardize our goal,” Blue said.
“We’re really not about that. Our main goal is competition.”
***
Many touted college prospects start commanding recruiters’ attention when they are in grade school. They augment their scholastic-league exploits by traveling the country with club teams, competing in closely scrutinized tournaments. USA Junior Nationals, which bills itself as a “Stepping Stone to Excellence Through Competition,” is not one of those events.Hundreds of coaches from Division I and II colleges evaluated nearly 1,000 prospects at showcase camps last week; some, like the Nike-sponsored LeBron James Skills Academy, were invitation-only. Others, like the Hoop Group Elite camp, a four-day event in Reading, Pa., offered open enrollment and cost $585 to attend.
Jordan Titze, who attended the USA Junior Nationals last year and recently graduated from Harrisburg (Pa.) HS, says he didn’t meet any NCAA coaches, and that his team coach came from a community college.
“Right away, my teammates and I thought it was a joke,” said Titze, adding that he didn’t receive a single college inquiry.
Titze and teammate Chris Buckmiller said they played in three or four games each day, adding that players were essentially left to coordinate their own efforts on the court.
“(The director) said they would send stat sheets,” Buckmiller said. “I didn’t see them keeping any stats.”
Grant Torgenson, from Fergus Falls, Minn., also attended the camp last year in hopes of being noticed. He wasn’t.
“If a player is really looking for a scholarship, (USA Junior Nationals) is not where they should go,” said Torgenson.
Past participants are not the only ones who have complaints about USA Junior Nationals.
Mike Flynn, a well-known girls club coach from Philadelphia, said he fields about a dozen calls about the program each spring. Flynn runs US Junior Nationals, a Nike-sponsored program that conducts NCAA-approved events. Flynn said he tries to deter parents from sending their children to the tournament with a similar name. “(Parents) say ‘Thank you very much, thank God I didn’t send the money.’”
***
Records list seven separate addresses for USA Junior Nationals within Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Kentucky. Its most recent address, in Madison, Wis., is outdated along with the others, according to the Better Business Bureau; for each address, the BBB lists unresolved complaints against the company alongside an ‘F’ rating.
Kerry McCafferty, a special agent from the FBI’s Detroit bureau, said the law enforcement agency made inquiries about USA Junior Nationals after it received a complaint “involving the loss of money” in January 2008. The agents did not turn up information that warranted a federal investigation, he said, and they concluded that the allegations were unsubstantiated.
In addition to Blue, BBB records listed two names as the program’s director: Gene Edwards and Gary Moore, whose name appears on correspondence received recently by potential participants. When questioned, Blue said he didn’t know Edwards or Moore, and added that he was “caught off guard” and couldn’t provide any further information.
Flynn compared the operators to a group of hucksters who advertise the world’s greatest party, then offer party-goers “chips and knockoff soda.”
“They can’t get nailed, though,” he added. “If you hold an event, you can’t get sued. The only people invited are those who wish upon a star.”
One of those people is the young player from New York City, but he won’t be among those who take their dreams to Champaign.
His mother – who said she can’t afford to repay the donations that she already turned over to the organizers – said she and her husband broke the news to their son on Sunday.
“He took it much better than what I thought he would,” she said. “He took it good, but I know that it hurt him at the same time, because I know he thought it was a great chance.
“He said, ‘Mommy, do they know how important this is to me?’”
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/high-school/scam-dunk-high-priced-tournament-takes-advantage-college-hopefuls-article-1.430936?pgno=3#ixzz2i6QsmRvH
The post Beware of Scams – Reprint of Article about Organization Promising College Scholarships appeared first on North Texas Region.