Posted: Monday December 09, 2002 2:45 PM
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He's ranked No. 1 nationally in his class. Basketball coaches ask about him constantly. He'll play more than 80 games this year around the nation. And he's 11 years old.
His name is Kendall Marshall. He's 5'1", weighs 90 pounds and is known as "Butter" for the way he spreads the ball around. He likes macaroni and cheese but not girls. In June, HoopScoopOnline.com, one of the best-known websites covering blue-chip recruits, ranked him the No. 1 fifth-grade player in America for last season.
You didn't know fifth-graders were ranked? Where you been? Tora Bora?
"Some kids in the neighborhood told me about it," says Kendall, now a sixth-grader who will be the first ... uh ... man off the bench for the Evangel Christian High varsity this winter in Woodbridge, Va., despite being six years younger than many of his teammates. "I didn't know what to think. I guess it's cool."
The very fact that someone ranks fifth-graders tells you how nutso all of us have become about sports.
"Who does this benefit?" says Will Robinson, the coach at nearby Woodbridge High. "If the kid pans out, is that a feather in somebody's cap? And who does it hurt? It hurts the kid. He's got these expectations the rest of his life."
Kendall says, "Sometimes kids come up to me and go, 'Hey, you're not all that.' One kid tried to get me mad so I'd fight him, but I didn't." Can't you see the poor kid if he doesn't lead every list from now until college?
Fan No. 1: That kid Marshall. So much potential, but what a bust.
Fan No. 2: I know. He didn't even make Playboy's Sixth-Grade All-America team this year.
"To rank a kid that young," says Kendall's dad, Dennis, a computer network administrator, "who would do that?"
Clark Francis, that's who. He runs HoopScoopOnline.com, a service that 150 coaches pay to read.
"Of course I haven't seen every fifth-grader," Francis says. "But the best ones go to the big camps and the AAU nationals. You see them. You hear things."
Francis says he doesn't really want to rank fifth-graders, but "the college coaches who pay my bills want to know. So you put kids' names out there, and if they turn out good, then you were the first to write about them. It helps."
But why, for the love of God, do coaches want to know about kids still in SpongeBob Squarepants pajamas?
"Let's say you're a college coach," says Francis. "You know that you have to beat Kentucky, Duke or North Carolina. To do that, you have to get the star players onto your campus when they're in junior high."
Can't you see it?
Kendall, welcome to Trey State. Check it out! Bunk beds! All the Lucky Charms you can eat! And I know a guy who can get you the key to the Slurpee machine at night!
And it's not just college coaches who want them tagged and identified. High school coaches want to know so they can recruit (often illegally). AAU coaches want to know so they can win national titles, like the 11-and-under championship that Kendall led his team to this year. Shoe companies want to know so they can get a leg up on the race for soles. Even sleazy street agents want to know so they can start turning heads.
Look, kid. You could use a nice new Schwinn, am I right?
It might be funny, if it didn't make you want to puke. Back when the fifth-grade list came out, Kendall was a 4'9" point guard. It's trouble when the list is taller than you are.
And you just know, somewhere, somebody's got a scouting report on the kid: Great spot-up J, quick hands, cries when he skins his knee.
What will they rank next? Tall couples who have really good genes!
It's this kind of hype that tricked Leon Smith and Korleone Young -- both of whom were ranked No. 1 in their class as middle-school players -- to go pro out of high school. Now both are out of the NBA and wondering where their futures went.
"The problem is these kids start to believe their press clippings," says Francis. "Then they stop working on their game. They're like, 'I'm 6'10", I can shoot, pass and dunk. And I'm in eighth grade. I've made it.'"
If you think the hype can't get to a kid's melon, you haven't heard of the legendary O.J. Mayo, from Huntington, W.Va., who tops most eighth-grade lists, signs autographs daily, has his own website (and a moustache) and plays at a Christian school that isn't even in his state -- along with five other out-of-state teammates.
Uh, Sister Magdalene? Can I be excused from math today? I gotta do MTV's Cribs.
Hopefully, it won't happen with Kendall.
"No, sir, I haven't gotten too excited about the whole thing," he says, "'cause I know I got my whole life ahead of me."
That figures, huh? The one person in all of this who is not acting like a sixth-grader is the sixth-grader.
Issue date: November 25, 2002
Don't miss The Life of Reilly (Total/SPORTS ILLUSTRATED, $22.95) -- a best-of compilation of Rick Reilly's columns and features, with a foreword written by Charles Barkley, available online and at bookstores everywhere.
