An extended visit with John Sherman from MTS

MJM: John, How are you today?

JS: I'm Doing well Michael

MJM: I suppose we should preface our talk with the fact that we have known each other for a long time, Haven't we.

JS: Yes we have, ever since your son Mike was in fifth grade I believe.

MJM: And he played for Magic Blue from fifth grade right through High School. So, That's where we got started. I remember first getting to know you - seeing you sit on the bench with a bunch of kids from Minneapolis Southwest, city kids, many year ago, and then I learned about the Magic program and my son started with you. It's been some time, hasn't it?

JS: It's been a long time, I've been on the bench now since 1979 in either youth or High School Basketball, so it's been a good run for me and I have enjoyed every minute of it.

MJM: Tell me a little about how you got started in the basketball world.

JS: I got started out in Apple Valley. I started out like most people do coaching a local in-house team. I did that for some time and then became the Commissioner of basketball for the Valley Athletic Association... We organized in-house and traveling team for grades one through six. That was a lot of fun and that's how I got into traveling basketball... I kind of went forward from there.

MJM: What time period was that?

JS: I started in 1979. That was when traveling basketball was fairly new. It had maybe been going for a year or two. I thought there was unlimited potential for traveling in Minnesota and for going to outstate tournaments and I actually organized some early tournaments too.

MJM: You have worked as a sports reporter for many years too. Were you in the business at that time?

JS: I started my sports writing career in 1972 and just passed my 37th anniversary. I've been doing that even longer than I've coached basketball.

MJM: So you have been an observer and participant in the basketball scene for almost 40 years.

JS: I'm kind of an historian of the State Boys' Basketball Tournament. I could name all the Champions, probably all the leading scorers right down the line. That's been my favorite event for all these years.

MJM: Tell me a little bit about how the Magic program began and your role.

JS: Well, first of all I think we need to talk about how AAU got started. I was involved with that on the ground floor. AAU started when a group of soccer parents actually go the High School League restrictions lifted. The High School League had restrictions that no more than three people from one High School could every play together in the off season and things like that.

No one could attend camps or they would be ineligible for a certain amount of time. A law suit brought those rules to a halt and opened the door for AAU and other traveling basketball experiences for our kids.

MJM: What year was that? Do you remember around when that happened?

JS: I can tell you exactly. It was 1988 and the first AAU tournament we went too was in Arkansas. There were players there like Grant Hill and Chris Weber and after seeing players like that we saw there was a whole other world out there beyond what we had with competition between the local suburbs here.

I've basically been going to AAU tournaments ever since 1988. I've had some teams that have placed fairly high, some national championship teams and so forth. It's been a great thrill to bring Minnesota kids to these events and measure ourselves against the rest of the country.

MJM: Minnesota Magic is a recognized name now. I remember when it was not as big and I would see you at events showing up with your station wagon loaded with kids from the city and kids who did not have rides. Tell me a little how the program started and how it has grown over the years?

JS: What I've tried to do with the Magic program Michael, Like anything else, we started small. We wanted to do it right for the kids that were in our program and serve those kids as well as we could. It kind of took on a life of its own.

We started out with five teams and then we went to seven, then ten, then twenty, then thirty, then forty. We have leveled off now at about thirty teams that we sponsor every year. We are a program that tries to get the inner city kids involved. We have programs where people donate money to us to help us with the expenses for the inner city kids. I still have the van that I load up every weekend.

I'm still picking kids up and still enjoy that part of it too. It's necessary to help give them the opportunity to play.

MJM: Tell me a little bit about your coaching history. You are now Head Coach at MTS. What was the journey to get that job?

JS: A man name Jameson Reustehoven who is now the Athletic Director at Minneapolis Edison gave me my first opportunity in High School ball. He brought me in as an Assistant Coach at Minneapolis Southwest and I stayed there with him for two years.

He left that position to go into college coaching and I went to Bloomington Kennedy for a year with Ed Cassidy, then I returned to Southwest for two years then when the Transition job opened up and it sounded like it would suit me pretty well. I applied and was fortunate to get the job.

MJM: How long have you been at Transitions now?

JS: This is my Sixth year Michael. I'd really been anxious to coach a High School team and to be a Head Coach. I'd applied at several other schools, but Transitions was the best for me. It was the best fit.

MJM: Tell me about the mission of Transition and how basketball fits into that mission.

JS: The mission of Transition is to serve a diverse range of students from college bound, academically gifted students to students who need a boost in their academics and need a direction in their lives.

I enjoy working with all kinds of kids and having a mix of kids on the team. We probably have quite a few kids at our school who need direction and need somebody just to care for them and to get them motivated in school and in basketball. I hope I've been that person for a lot of kids.

MJM: People generally think of at risk kids as those having academic problems. I think most people don't realize is that with funding cuts the programs for gifted students have really dropped off the scene. Those kids are also at tremendous risk for dropping out. Often out of boredom and not being challenged. It's interesting to hear that MTS included those kids in their mission.

JS: That's true. We want to give every one of the players who participates in our basketball program an opportunity to go to college. In most cases we are able to match them up with an opportunity to play college basketball as well.

MJM: Minnesota has really come on the stage the last few year for basketball. We have lots of programs with many teams a the 16 and 17 age level playing the national circuit. Unfortunately as we see more kids with Division I scholarships we also see more kids who find themselves in academic trouble.

These are kids who have done well with basketball but who have not keep up in the classroom.

JS: Part of our mission at MTS is to address that problem. To play on our spring AAU team at MTS you have to maintain your grades, you have to be coming to school and you have to be making progress toward graduation. I'm proud to say that in my previous five years at MTS we have had 42 players who have been on varsity on seniors and 40 have graduated from High School. That's probably our stat that I'm most proud of right now.

MJM: Tell me about the controversy that's been in the new lately with scoring records being broken currently and in the past. There has been a lot of press. Give me your perspective please.

JS: First of all I will say, and I think I can be confident saying this, 90% of our critics have never seen even one MTS basketball game. They may have seen us once at the State Tournaments. Some other critics may have seen us one time and have formed their opinion in most case without even seeing us play.

I would like to invite anyone interested in our program to come down to our gym and watch what we've actually doing.

I think there is a wide gap between what is and what people think we are doing down there.

The biggest gap might be in talking about our records. For instance, Kevin Noreen's State score record of 3534 points for his career and a lot of people think he has achieved this by being part of a team that presses the whole game.

They think he plays 36 minutes a game even when we are ahead by 80 points. Just the other day he came out of a game with 15 minutes left in the game. The game before that he came to the bench with 14 minutes left in the game. Granted he had a lot of points when he came out but I think the people who are negative about the record have a real misconception about his playing time and also the number of shots he takes.

He is a play who is capable of getting 40 points on 20 shots or even less than 20 shots. That of course includes some free throws but he is not just out there shooting every time he catches the ball. He is also among the State assist leaders right now and just plays a good solid team game all around.

As far as our team scoring records, we fast, fast, fast basketball and the scores were a lot lower in the days of the center jump. I think some of the people who have criticized our team would love to see the center jump come back too. The reality is that basketball is changing, it is getting more athletic and hopefully when you look out on the courts ten years from now, everybody is going to be playing the way that we've playing right now.

I think we might be a few years ahead of the time on how we play and how we move the ball. How we pass and how we get everybody involved in a very high pace on offence and I just think that is going to be the future of basketball.

I think we are going to move out of this era of flex offenses and 2-3 zone defenses sometime in the very near future.

MJM: John, can we talk a little about your perspective on open enrolment. We have this system in place where if families are not happy with their local school they are free to move to greener pastures.

Thousands of kids evidently transfer each year for numerous reasons. Tell me about your views on the concept.

JS: It seems to me that the number one option that people are taking advantage of is moving from the city to the suburbs. Going from Minneapolis to Hopkins and other schools - Minnetonka certainly.

MJM: I was at Saint Anthony Village this week which is a very good public academic school and I was told that they have lots of OE kids from Edison.

JS: Exactly, it's not just the schools that are in the spotlight all the time. I think the city, Minneapolis schools in particular have a problem with quality education right now and that's the reason for some of the open enrolment.

In fact, that's the reason a lot of kids elect to come to MTS. We have smaller class sizes, more individual attention, a better atmosphere for learning than I have seen at some of the public schools. We are not perfect by any means but we do have caring teachers and they do provide a lot of individual attention for our students. It's what they need in order to graduate.

As far as changing schools, I don't think that most people in the suburbs and around the State especially realize what it's like for some of the city kids. How they are moving around and how they are losing their apartments and losing their homes and being forced to move every couple of years or in some cases every six months or every three months.

The Sociology of it is overwhelming. We sometimes have people who are homeless and going to our school. I just don't think people realize that, they think we're recruiting kids but the fact is that kids are moving residence and they are going to a closer school or are going to a school that is on their bus line and in some cases that's MTS and in some cases it's North and in some cases Henry and in some cases Roosevelt.

The kids in the city do tend to move around a little more than people in the suburbs or in outstate Minnesota. They don't live in the same house for 21 years or 37 years. They generally don't own homes, they move from apartment to apartment or in some cases rent part of a house or live with relatives. It's a whole different world in the city.

MJM: There has been so much controversy over the scoring records. Tell me if you have felt some frustration over the situation. Do you feel your history of outreach and the good done at MTS is being undermined by the critical attention.

JS: I do feel a little bit of frustration Michael, and especially 5 years ago when Cash Eggleston scored 90 points in a High School basketball game. It was frustrating to me that so many people reacted negatively toward the player rather than looking at the accomplishment.

They reacted very negatively and as a result he didn't even want to go on with his career after High School and he was a brilliant High School player. He lost interest mainly because of the press coverage in the Minneapolis Star and Tribune. Also, some of the talk radio shows.

They just lambasted this kid for no reason, without knowing him or what kind of kid he was or his circumstances. I think there was a lot of sentiment that they didn't want a kid from Franklin Avenue holding the State scoring record. So they called it bad sportsmanship.

I think it should be pointed out that when the previous record of seventy points in a game was set, that was set in a blowout... What people don't realize is that when you playing a High School basketball game the Coach is not sitting on the sidelines counting the points during a game.

Especially when the points are 90. You are not counting the points as the game goes on. I thought he might have had 60 some, 70 some. I really had no idea until we got done counting that night how many there were.

He did may 20 three pointers in that game which is a pretty quick way to score some points.

MJM: I remember watching Cash and your Magic Gold team and Cash was a phenomenal player at the time. There was a period where he dominated game after game.

There were very few times that team lost. let's talk a little more about the kind of player that he was. Today the talk is about his scoring record but for two or three years he was recognized as one of Minnesota's most promising young players.

JS: First of all Cash played up a grade his whole traveling career for the most part. He dominated a year up as well as his own grade. He was five foot eight in fifth grade and he was five eight when he graduated from High School. He had to make the most of his skills.

It was not like a Seven foot two player standing under the basket guarded by a five eleven player scoring these ninety points. He scored the 90 points with skill, with shooting, with the help of his teammates and it was just a great individual performance probably like we will never see again.

I think the closest to his 20 three pointers in a game is about 12. That puts some perspective on it.

MJM: John, Let's wrap up here. Do you have any closing comments? Is there anything else we should talk about? Particularly in terms of the recent controversy.

JS: Again with the recent controversy, it's coming without people seeing us play and not realizing that we are playing faster than everybody else. It's not realizing that we have the reserves in the game as early as most teams would in these situations.

We have games where we have 11 or 12 players scoring just like everybody else. We are scoring more points because we are playing a faster game. I just wish people would come out and see us play. I wish they would realize that we are playing teams like Minnetonka and Columbia Heights and Minneapolis Henry this year and we are certainly holding our own with those teams.

The other point I would like to make is that people always accuse us of playing weak charter schools and building our records against weak charter schools. We don't have a single charter school on our schedule this year. We are playing all public and private schools this year. ..

We finally have evolved to that.

We didn't want to play against charter schools when we first started out in this program. In most cases the charter schools were the only schools that wanted to play us. I think that's something that didn't come out in the Star Tribune article.

That we sent email to 150 to 200 schools a year asking for games and had very few takers. As a result we did end up playing charter schools early on. We have evolved past that to playing a schedule of class AA, AAA and AAAA schools with a few A schools mixed in.

MJM: John, we will wrap it up there. I want to thank you for taking the time and answering all these questions.

JS: I probably gave some long answers. I'm sorry I got long winded sometimes.

MJM: I happy that I don't have time or space restrictions on MinnesotaPreps. That's one reason I like my contract and relationship with Rivals and Yahoo! As the Publisher I have the freedom to get past sound bites. Thanks again.

JS: Thank you Michael, I really appreciate it.