![]() ![]() “When I first met Patrick, he was in seventh or eighth grade at the achievement school,” Jarvis remembered. I don't know if pro guys do that anymore.”Įwing, like Jarvis, grew up in the Coast neighborhood, near the river – on River Street to be exact.Ĭoming from Jamaica to Cambridge at 12, in the mid 1970s, wasn't the easiest adjustment for Ewing. “They used to come over to Cambridge and play pickup ball at the community center and the outdoor parks. “Growing up, Sam Jones, KC Jones, Satch Sanders, Bill Russell were my heroes,” said Jarvis. Most of the 1962 Cambridge Athletic Hall of Fame Rindge Tech team picked up basketball fundamentals from city legend Francis "Rindge" Jefferson, according to Jarvis.īack in those days, you might head over to the community center for some open run and find a Celtic or two on the court. “We went around to the outdoor courts at Hoyt Field, Corporal Burns, North Cambridge. “I was taught how to play, like all the kids I grew up with, at the Cambridge Community Center,” Jarvis said. Once described by the Boston Globe as one of two “midgets” starting at guard for Rindge Tech (alongside George Hewit), Jarvis learned the game going from hoop-to-hoop across the city. “Whether I go back physically, I go back often spiritually and emotionally.” “It's a place that has always been special,” said Jarvis, formerly a longtime college coach at Boston University, George Washington, St. ![]() A lifetime plus another lifetime, he was a playmaker in the Rindge Tech backcourt. A lifetime ago, he shouted instructions to Ewing from just in front of the CRLS bench. Things have changed - with the influx of money and educated people - but it's still the same.”Įven before the pandemic, Jarvis, 75, now living in Southeastern Florida, didn't get back home often. “I remember growing up, going to East Cambridge was rough – it was predominately white. “Racism is still a part of the fabric of this country and this world,” Ewing said. “It should have been four, but we lost to Lexington ,” added Ewing.Īs far as basketball has taken him away from the city, the experience of being confronted with that level of ugliness as a teenager remains fresh in Ewing's mind. “We did it with style, class and a whole lot of great defense. “Not only were we the best, but we were the most fundamental team, Jarvis said. That stretch of CRLS basketball is unparalleled in school history. ![]() Whatever things were being said to us, we took it out on the opposing team.” “I was called a lot of things on the floor by fans. “They'd slash our tires and brick our bus,” Ewing said. The team bus was assaulted and racial slurs were fired at them from the stands. They just couldn't handle this predominantly black team playing the way we played: with so much precision, speed, agility and yet fundamentals.” “So many of the people living in the suburbs left the city to get away from black folks. It was white-flight forced face-to-face with an unbeatable black team. That level of hardwood dominance certainly played a role in the animus the team endured from opposing fans, but it was more than that. “It was rough going outside of Cambridge to the suburbs,” said NBA Hall of Famer Patrick Ewing, Class of 1981.įor a time, CRLS was the best high school basketball team in the country: three straight state championship victories and 77 wins in 78 games, with the only loss coming against out-of-state competition. “We were so much disliked,” remembered Mike Jarvis, who was the head coach of the CRLS boys basketball team from 1978 to 1985. Four decades ago, a bus full of Cambridge Rindge and Latin School basketball players could hardly venture into the suburbs for away games without being confronted with racial hostility. ![]()
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