CUMBERLAND, Md. — The cheerleaders who populated the baseline provided one of the evening’s few reminders that this was, in fact, a high school basketball game. There to represent the one school located less than 400 miles away, they occupied the area to the left and right of an ESPN cameraman stationed under the basket.
The level of play at Allegany College of Maryland on this Thursday night in early December suggested this was something well beyond high school hoops. The court looked too small for these boys, who were flying around with such speed and power. One observer, standing near the doorway of the gym as he waited to find a seat, chuckled in near disbelief at the spectacle.
“This isn’t like normal high school ball,” he said. “This is a whole different thing.”
It was the opening day of the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference, a new league designed to be the best in the nation. Featuring eight teams from seven states, the ambitious venture is the glitzy and logical next step for a sport that has long been headed in this direction.
Advertisement
Throughout the winter, NIBC teams will meet up in one city or another for a weekend of games — a hoops roadshow. This first weekend featured a split: Four teams faced off in Florida, and the other four were here, tucked away in the mountains of Western Maryland.
The night’s host was Bishop Walsh, a small K-12 Catholic school with a proud and ambitious basketball program. The Spartans often travel south to take on some of the better teams in the D.C. area, and they leave with mixed results. In recent years, they have developed a reputation as a strong program but not a regional juggernaut like many of the other members of this new conference.
This winter, the Spartans returned just three players from a senior-heavy team and restocked their roster with transfers eager for this opportunity. It will take time for the group to jell, but this team has time in abundance. Like most of the NIBC programs, Bishop Walsh runs a boarding program for its basketball team, meaning the group is together much more than the average high school squad.
Advertisement
“It feels like getting ready for college, being here,” said junior guard Daniel Dormu, who grew up in the D.C. area and attended two small private schools in Virginia before ending up in Cumberland. “I’m spending so much time at the dorm with my teammates. We’re all getting ready for the next level.”
On this night, Bishop Walsh was set to play Indiana power La Lumiere in the second game of the doubleheader. The Spartans had their cheerleaders and a sizable group of supporters. Most everyone else in the gym seemed to have come out of curiosity.
This was the new reality, and Bishop Walsh was about to get a taste of it.
Consistent competition
The NIBC was born from chaos. Last winter, the coronavirus pandemic turned high school basketball upside down. One of the first consequences was the cancellation of most tournaments that required travel. If there was going to be any basketball played in this climate, it made the most sense to keep it close to home.
Advertisement
But that’s not how schools such as La Lumiere and Bishop Walsh operate. Those programs have reached or aspire to reach a stratosphere that requires them to travel far to find an opponent that can push them. Their home court is a hotel room; their conference is the country.
So discussions began among a group of like-minded schools: La Lumiere, Bishop Walsh, IMG Academy (Fla.), Legacy Early College (S.C.), Montverde Academy (Fla.), Oak Hill Academy (Va.), Sunrise Christian Academy (Kan.) and Wasatch Academy (Utah). They often played one another at national tournaments anyway, so why not form a temporary league to salvage something from the lost winter?
They set up a few events, and those were mostly successful. The events required the teams to stay in a bubble environment, which has not been replicated this season but remains a possibility with case numbers again on the rise. More than anything, the league gave eight basketball-hungry schools consistent high-level competition.
Advertisement
“As we were in the midst of that, it became more and more apparent to us that we should continue it,” said Kasey Kesselring, headmaster at Montverde Academy. “We’re already playing each other anyway at different tournament events, so why not continue this league moving forward to create some sustainable, competitive games in the future?”
By the spring, those talks had reached an advanced stage, and the league found a commissioner: Rashid Ghazi, president of Paragon Marketing Group.
Paragon has been at the forefront of putting high school sports on a national stage. It was behind the now-famous ESPN telecast of a 2002 game between LeBron James’s St. Vincent-St. Mary team and Oak Hill. Since then, the company has put more than 700 high school games on ESPN networks.
Thirty-eight of the 40 NIBC regular season games are set to be broadcast on ESPNU or ESPN Plus this winter. As an entertainment option, the NIBC sees itself as a unique and accessible product for basketball fans.
Advertisement
“There is a large group of fans who know exactly who Montverde is or Oak Hill is or La Lumiere is, just like they know Duke or North Carolina or the Knicks or the Lakers,” Ghazi said. “And if you go on message boards or on Twitter, most NBA fans — especially those fans whose teams are struggling — know exactly who the kids in our conference are and are already looking at how they could fit into their team.”
In 247 Sports’ rankings, 24 of the top 100 and three of the top five prospects in the Class of 2022 play in the NIBC.
But Ghazi and the other founders know big names alone will not foster goodwill across prep basketball. Schools with strong, travel-happy athletic programs are sometimes assumed to be diploma factories, built on shaky foundations with questionable aims. The Bishop Sycamore football team debacle in the fall further fueled stereotypes.
Advertisement
But the NIBC aims to fight that idea by promoting programs that are attached to reputable schools with a long history of academic success. Each one is a brick-and-mortar four-year institution.
“There may be some perceptions that high-level athletic programs somehow are not compatible with high academic and disciplinary standards,” Kesselring said. “One of the things we want to accomplish with this league is to show otherwise. … I think I speak for all of our schools when I say we want our student-athletes to be contributing members of their school community beyond showing up and playing basketball.”
Beyond the legitimacy of the programs, there is the question that has followed Ghazi and Paragon for two decades, since they first put James on television: Why should any of this exist? Ghazi said he has long faced criticism from people who see youth sports as a community-based activity.
“No one questions the [15-year-old] figure skater in the Olympics or the young tennis player or golfer,” Ghazi said. “When it comes to individual sports, nobody complains. But when it comes to team sports, everyone thinks they know what’s best for these athletes. … For the kids who want to participate at this level, we want to give them the opportunity. But regional and local opportunities will always be there.”
Game time
It is close to 9 p.m. by the time Bishop Walsh and La Lumiere take the floor at Allegany. Wasatch Academy had won the first game of the night, beating Legacy Early College in a contest that went down to the wire and thrilled the crowd.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, Dan Prete was busy playing dual roles: Bishop Walsh coach and event director. The fourth-year leader shuttled between the locker room and the sideline, prepping the Spartans for battle and answering questions from sponsors, volunteers and fans.
Prete, who has coached at Montrose Christian, St. Andrew’s Episcopal and St. James, knew his team was about to embark on a challenging campaign.
“We have a very talented group, but at the same time they haven’t experienced this level yet, and they’re going to get their eyes opened wide very shortly here,” Prete said before the game. “They’ll have to pay the bills early, but down the road they’ll be better off for it.”
From the opening tip, it’s clear Bishop Walsh is not as big or as fast as La Lumiere, but it’s hard to envision what the Spartans might look like against a typical high school team. It’s hard to place any of these teams in a traditional context.
Advertisement
Dormu sets a feisty tone at point guard, repeatedly throwing his body into a mass of bigger ones near the hoop. The junior said he was excited when he saw the team’s schedule and knew there was no leveling up left to do. “I love the challenge,” he said. “It motivates me to be better so I can go at the top guys and do my thing.”
The Lakers hold a double-digit lead for most of the game and end up winning by 21. It’s a lackluster debut for the Spartans, but they seem to understand it will take time to adjust.
Senior forward Travis Roberts, who led the Spartans with 14 points, could take solace in the loss. After all, the night was everything he imagined.
“None of us are really experienced playing against teams like this, so we’re going to have to put it all together,” he said. “But what more could you want than this?”
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9GtqmhqYGd%2BcH2RaGlsZ5ietKl50pyfqKecYq%2Biv8qeq5uZnKF6rrvDnqmnZZWnrm6xyKCfrWWkmq6uv4yamquno6h6tLHVnqVmq6SWwaa%2FjKilnmWcmq6owcRo