InsideBayArea.com

Tammerlin Drummond
Staff Writer

Article Created: 05/15/2008 08:16:08 PM PDT

if(requestedWidth > 0){ document.getElementById('articleViewerGroup').style.width = requestedWidth + "px"; document.getElementById('articleViewerGroup').style.margin = "0px 0px 10px 10px"; }

When the McClymonds High School boys basketball team blew out rival Dominguez of Compton in March to win the state championship and complete a perfect 32-0 season, the Tribune ran the story on the front page under a banner headline. The inside pages featured an extensive photo montage of jubilant McClymonds coach Dwight Nathaniel and his players.

It's the kind of ink that is usually dedicated to horrible natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina or tragedies of man's own making such as the shooting of 10-year-old Chris Rodriguez, paralyzed by an errant bullet while he was taking a piano lesson.

When it comes to West Oakland, where McClymonds is located, the news reports are usually so full of crime and mayhem that outsiders might be forgiven for thinking that nothing positive ever happens there.

That is why McClymonds' win on the court was about much more than basketball — for the players, their coach and their community.

"I feel like a lot of people judge us negatively because we're from West Oakland," said co-captain Damario Sims, 18. "There are so many bad things going on, we wanted to restore our good name."

On Monday, the Warriors, sporting their orange basketball jerseys, traveled to Sacramento, where they got the royal treatment from the state Legislature. Assemblyman Sandre Swanson, D-Oakland, had introduced resolutions commemorating the team's historic achievement and honoring Nathaniel, who is retiring after 13 years. "Their victory is an historic point of pride for the school and the community," Swanson said.

Today, Bill Russell, a McClymonds alum and one-time NBA great, is scheduled to visit McClymonds to offer his personal congratulations to the team.

Yetunde Reeves, principal of Excel High, one of the two high schools at the McClymonds Educational Complex, traveled with the team to Sacramento.

She said that what's so impressive about the players is not just that the boys, who were considered underdogs, blew out their opponent 73-54. Nor the fact that they accomplished such a feat fielding a team from a school with only 500 students.

What makes them so unusual is that they are winners off the court as well. Six of the seven graduating seniors are going on to college. "So many of the kids are actually meeting graduation requirements, and that often doesn't get told," Reeves said.

The story that usually does get told is that McClymonds is a bad school in a bad neighborhood. That student test scores used to be so low and academic performance so poor that the school almost closed. But that is an old story in need of some updating.

There has been steady progress since the original McClymonds split up into two schools in 2005. Forty seniors are graduating this year compared to 10 when Reeves took over as principal three years ago.

As West Oakland's representative on the City Council,, Nancy Nadel knows as well as anyone how difficult it is to change negative stereotypes about children from West Oakland — their abilities and potential. All too often what gets publicized over and over again is the bad behavior and dysfunction in the community, which certainly exists, but is not the entire story.

"Some of our youngsters say that the only way to get recognition for something is by killing someone," Nadel said. "It's important for the next generation coming up to see that they have models of excellent behavior."

I can't think of any better models than the Warriors and Coach Nathaniel.

"I told them that what they have done is a real gift to the city," Nathaniel said. "It was something positive for the whole community to rally around."

My parents both went to McClymonds back in the early 1960s. My mother was a cheerleader when Paul Silas, who later became an NBA player and coach, played basketball for McClymonds. My father was an all-city football player and school president.

All I heard growing up was about how great McClymonds was back in the day.

Sounds to me like Nathaniel and his team have carried on the torch.