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Article By: David Dorsey
The Ida Baker basketball team helped make lemonade out of a lemon of a canceled tournament.
The Ida Baker Bulldogs played the Waterloo (Canada) Academy Warriors Thursday afternoon at Golden Gate High, where 23 people sat in the bleachers at tipoff, three of whom were assistant coaches scouting for Cincinnati (Ohio) Moeller High.
The atmosphere could not have been a bigger contrast to the City of Palms Classic, which over five days last week at Bishop Verot High School drew more than 10,000 fans. They gathered to watch some of the nation’s top teams.
Naples businessman Sandy Getta had a similar vision for the Gulfshore Invitational, to which he had invited 22 teams for two tournament brackets that were scheduled for this week until the funding fell through.
Getta canceled the Invitational two weeks ago.
Waterloo Academy, Moeller High and Wilbraham & Monson (Mass.), however, could not so simply have canceled their planned trip to Naples.
Although Moeller High’s players and coaches took a bus to Naples, the other two teams booked flights and hotel rooms, as did many family members. They could not get refunds.
Golden Gate High coach Joe Consolino and a number of others, including Getta, worked behind the scenes to find those three programs some games, for which Waterloo coach Tom Schneider said he was thankful.
“We would still be coming,” Schneider said.
“It’s too bad, because it (the Invitational) sounded like it was going to be a great event. It just fell apart. I’m just glad we’re getting some games.”
About six inches of snow fell this week in Waterloo, near Toronto. Schneider and his players did not mind. They spent the day after Christmas on a Marco Island beach, where they are staying in condos.
“I didn’t think we were going to get to play any games at all,” said Tyler Schneider, the coach’s son and a senior on the Waterloo Academy team.
Goodluck Okonoboh, a junior guard for Wilbraham & Monson, is being recruited by Kentucky, Pittsburgh, Syracuse and West Virginia among others. He was named “Goodluck,” after his father, a cab driver, survived a bullet wound to the chest before Goodluck was born.
Okonoboh said had his team not secured three games this week, the team still would have made the trip to Naples anyway.
“We would have worked out and practiced,” Okonoboh said.
“We’re just happy to be playing games.”
Moeller coach Carl Kremer echoed the sentiment.
“People here have been incredibly nice about setting this up,” Kremer said.
Getta did not attend the games Thursday. Consolino said that may have been for the best, as the coaches are still angry over how the invitational fizzled.
“We’re all a little bit embarrassed,” Kremer said of accepting the invitation to the invitational. “People in the coaching community keep asking me, ‘How did you get snookered like that?’ But you live and you learn.”
Scheduling these games on the fly worked well for Ida Baker coach Jay Sanderson, who said he thought two weeks ago that his team had secured a spot in the East Lee County tournament. It hadn’t.
Ida Baker lost to Waterloo 78-34 on Thursday with Baker’s leading scorer Seth Woods out with an illness.
“I think their shortest guy was taller than our tallest guy,” Sanderson said after the 44-point loss that dropped the Bulldogs’ record to 1-11. “You never like to lose by 40, but then again, we have three sophomores playing on varsity. We’ll build with these games.”
Baker also found a game for 1 p.m. today at Ida Baker High against Winter Park. Spencer Rivers, the younger brother of New Orleans Hornets guard Austin Rivers and the son of Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers is expected to play.
“This is a phenomenal experience for our young guys,” Sanderson said.
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