Coach’s Dream Provides Girls Their Showcase : Grainger Helps His Charges Win Basketball Scholarships

SAN DIEGO —  Juli Cheskaty remembers hearing the story shortly before she and her high school teammates began tournament play in Colorado Springs last summer.

Coach Ken Grainger had gathered his athletes and had urged them to work hard. Pretty standard stuff. He told them to play the game of basketball as if it might be their last opportunity to play.

“Make it a good memory,” he said, leaning forward on his lone leg with the aid of crutches. “You never know. . . .”

Grainger, however, has been there. Nine years ago--on his final day with two legs--he played in a pick-up basketball game, and because that was not enough to quench his enthusiasm for play, he stayed behind another two hours.

“I was running up and down the court, pulling up, shooting jump shots in fast-break situations,” Grainger told the girls. “Here I was, a 23-year-old man, running up and down the court acting like a 10-year-old.

“I was exhausted and that’s the last memory I have of playing basketball. And it’s a good memory.”

Grainger lost his right leg in a motorcycle accident later that day.

“You better have fun,” he lectured. “You better leave it all on the court, because what if some doctor says tomorrow you can’t play again because you tore something? You will have this memory of this game for the rest of your life. Did I do the best I can?”

Cheskaty listened, and after playing inspired basketball for Grainger last summer, she returned to San Diego and continued to work hard under his “Basketball Showcase” tutelage.

She averaged more than 21 points for Coach Ron Bennett’s rejuvenated Francis Parker High School basketball team, and after taking one more off-season tournament trip to El Paso, Tex., with Grainger, she became one of only three girls in San Diego County this year to win a full basketball scholarship to a Division I college.

“Ken Grainger took Juli to El Paso and I know for a fact that the eyewitness viewing of Juli in El Paso sealed the deal for a scholarship to go to Idaho State,” Juli’s father, Barry Cheskaty, said. “We have Ron Bennett to thank for giving Juli a chance to build her stats at Francis Parker and making it a big-time program.

“And we have to thank Ken Grainger and his associate, Toler Goodwin, who worked with Juli, spotlighted her and allowed her to be seen.”

If all goes according to Grainger’s innovative plans, Cheskaty will be the first of many young women to secure a free college education on the strength of their basketball play.

“Where is Juli Cheskaty going without that scholarship? Mesa College,” Grainger said. “You have all these other girls who are supposedly better and getting the ink, and then you have Juli Cheskaty, who played for a Division 5 school like Francis Parker, and she gets the scholarship.

“I’m sure there are a lot of upset people out there: Who’s Juli? What does she do? They have to be saying what the heck? But it’s Basketball Showcase doing its job. She was seen. If Juli Cheskaty can get a Division I scholarship, hey, they are out there.”

Grainger, a crusader who has been thrown hard from his horse on occasion, has committed himself to improving girls’ basketball in San Diego County. He began his efforts conventionally as a high school coach and now has become the private tutor to players desiring an edge on the competition.

Ever-the-rebel--with or without cause--he was dismissed as Clairemont High School’s girls basketball coach midway through the 1989 season after becoming a pain in the administrative process.

“I didn’t like the way the administration was conducting things,” he said. “They were not supporting girls’ athletics whatsoever. The uniforms were atrocious, so I donated my own money to buy new ones. I painted the gym, started a spring league and they didn’t care.

“There were promises made and not kept. . . . A lot of people that are administrators don’t see athletics as being that important, especially when it comes to girls.”

After his dismissal, Grainger began schooling interested athletes on his own. He took Cheskaty and a group of high school athletes to Colorado Springs to be seen by more than 100 college coaches. When funds ran short, he chipped in $900 of his own money.

“When it comes to kids you may have only one chance to touch their lives,” he said, “so you better do it right.”

The trip to Colorado Springs convinced Grainger there was need to do more. He organized “Basketball Showcase,” and now charges $35 a month for girls who wish to work on their games and pursue a college scholarship.

“The whole purpose is to give girls year-round basketball,” he said. “Boys can do it. They can go into a gym and play. Girls can’t. Girls go in and they have to pick up into a boys game and chances are they will play one game and they are out. Girls need somewhere to go to have an opportunity to play.

“It’s a come-when-you-want philosophy. We don’t worry about who is not here, but who is here. The gym will be open if one girl comes in. If you can’t afford it, come anyway. There are some kids who want to go year-round and who really want a Division I or Division II scholarship.”

Grainger rents local gymnasiums and contracts coaches such as Goodwin, Mt. Carmel’s Tracey Johnson and Bennett to work with the girls. He has organized a spring league for high school players, and each weekend provides four hours of basketball-camp-like instruction to those who are willing to work as if it might be their last time on the court.

“I’ve been working with Juli for three years and she was definitely not a scholarship candidate in the beginning,” Grainger said. “She had a nice shot and that’s it. She didn’t have any fundamental aspects of the game and her defense was horrendous.

“But after the coach from Idaho State scouted her, she said the reason they liked her so much was because of the defense she played.”

There are not enough minutes in the day to satisfy Grainger’s desire to coach. At the end of each practice, he has his players say out loud: “I’m a better basketball player today than I was yesterday, but not as good as I will be tomorrow.”

Grainger believes in aggressive in-your-face defense, and that’s what you would expect from such a pioneer. He’s fighting the system and testing the security of local high school coaches who will be lending their players to him in the off-season. Ask Cheskaty, the poster child for Basketball Showcase, how he’s doing?

“I always wanted a scholarship, but I never thought it would be Division I,” she said. “I guess I was just lucky.”

Lucky and dedicated. There were all those individual workouts at the Boys and Girls Club in Clairemont. All those early morning practices at Francis Parker. All that work.

“Everyone says Division I scholarships are hard to get,” Grainger said. “That’s baloney. They are out there. The chances of coaches coming to San Diego to watch girls is slim and none, so you have to make contacts. You have to be seen. But you can make it happen.

“The opportunity is there for everyone, but if you don’t give yourself that opportunity, there was never one there in the first place.”