If Seattle Cop Yells ‘Spread ‘Em,’ Don’t Be Alarmed
The old good cop/bad cop coaching gambit gets a singular spin at Summit K-12, inner-city Seattle’s envoy to the State B basketball tournament.
The Invaders just have a cop.
He has his good days and bad and his in-between days, too - but mostly Brett Smith tries to see to it that the basketball players at this little alternative education oasis get coached and not policed.
The policing gets done from 8:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m., patrolling the mean streets of downtown Seattle.
To protect and serve, and X and O.
And this week, to survive and play on. After stumbling in Wednesday’s first round against North Beach, the Invaders dodged elimination Thursday with a 50-45 victory over Orcas Island. Next up: Toutle Lake, which routed the Invaders by 30 in last year’s tournament.
Surely Summit would love to find an alternative to that education.
Actually, the Invaders had another alternative in mind. This was the year, they were certain, the northwest Tri-District would be represented in the State B’s final four and possibly beyond - and so it is.
But it’s Clallam Bay doing the representing. The same Clallam the Invaders beat a week ago.
“We stubbed our toe the first day,” Smith admitted, “but we honestly believe we’re one of the best teams in the state. We’re just not playing like it right now. We fell into a funk some time ago and we’re still trying to battle out of it.”
The Invaders have decent size, a steady point guard in Doug Sims and one of the tournament’s more intriguing talents in forward Bill Wilder, but something does seem to be missing. An East Side snob would suggest it’s tough competition inside the Sea-Tac League, but Smith took pains to make sure that wasn’t the case.
He put the Invaders on a December diet of Vitamin AA and AAA from the Metro and Kingco leagues.
“We played the toughest schedule of any B team in the state the last three years,” Smith said. “We’re down six to Blanchet with 2 minutes left. Sammamish beat us on a prayer at the buzzer. We should have beat Juanita, we had Ingraham on the ropes and we beat Cleveland.”
Sounds like the best endorsement ever for B basketball. If not, then this is:
“We came here last year and I was amazed at how electrifying the B is,” Smith said. “I played on a triple-A state championship team for Roosevelt in 1982, but this tournament is much more exciting.”
Nonetheless, when Smith was casting for a coaching job, the Bs didn’t enter his brain.
He assisted for a year at Tyee and put in for the job at Ingraham, where he was runner-up. Summit’s position opened about the same time and he got a referral.
“I live a block from the school,” he said, “and I didn’t even know it existed.”
As we should know by now - this is the Invaders’ fifth trip to state - Summit is one of several alternative schools in the Seattle district, but one with a full kindergarten-through-12 enrollment of 650 and a high school curriculum heavy on art and drama. Smith likened it to a private school in a public school district, but his players see it differently.
“It’s like a small-town school, in a way,” said Wilder, who has attended Summit since the third grade. “You grow up with everyone. There’s a couple guys on the team who’ve been going there longer than I have.”
Perception, alas, is another matter.
“The bad side is two things: people think I recruit out of the Metro and I’ve never recruited a player,” Smith said, “and since we’re an alternative school, people think we have all these bad kids. ‘You do such a great job with these problem kids,’ I’ll hear. That’s not Summit at all.”
Possibly Smith’s other job influences the perception?
It shouldn’t. A former University of Washington football player (he was a backup split end on the Orange Bowl team), Smith actually joined the Seattle police force six years ago with the notion of coaching, once he could work his schedule around it.
“Seattle police are supposed to be involved in the community,” he said, “and I can’t think of being more involved than this.”
Actually, he could - which is why he coaches Summit’s girls softball team, too.
He does his best to keep his jobs separate, so the Invaders don’t get the gory details or the third degree. If he tells his players to spread ‘em, he means go four-corners and run some clock.
“He’s OK,” laughed Sims, the son of King County councilman Ron Sims. “It isn’t a heavy discipline thing. He gets red in the face and yells a little when things aren’t going his way, but he’s OK.
“He doesn’t use that cop power - let it go to his head and use it against us.”
Guess his gambit must be good cop/good coach.
, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = John Blanchette The Spokesman-Review