The Ball (29 page)

I asked him if he knew of Amos Hill and what happened to him.

“Everyone who knows Springfield basketball knew Amos Hill. Most gifted athlete that ever came out of Springfield. But the same thing happened to him, only worse. Do you know he got all the way through high school and couldn't read or write? No wonder the poor guy drank himself to death.”

“Our kids know school and home come first,” added Joe. “If you want to play for the team, you need to keep your grades up and do the right thing at home.”

In 2004, the first year of New Leadership's boys basketball program, with no seniors to play and no gym to call their own, the varsity team won the western Massachusetts conference for their division and went on to be the first charter school to play in a state title game.

“That win was big for the boys team,” said Coach Gee. “But that was just the beginning. Then Qisi joined the girls team and put New Leadership girls basketball on the national map.”

“Qisi” is Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir, an honors graduate from New Leadership, now playing as a second-year point guard for the Division I Memphis Tigers. And if there's anyone walking the streets of Springfield today who embodies the full legacy of James Naismith, Bilqis has got my vote.

In 2009, she finished her senior year at New Leadership with a staggering 3,070 career points, shattering the state record set 18 years earlier by University of Connecticut and WNBA star and TV commentator Rebecca Lobo. It was beyond unlikely that Bilqis could come out of a tiny unknown Division III charter school like New Leadership to surpass Lobo's long-standing record by 300 points. It was astounding that she stood only five feet, three inches, 13 inches shorter than Lobo, when she set the record. But the most powerful part of her story, and the part she's most proud of, is that she did it all while staying true to her beliefs as a devout Muslim woman. For four years, Bilqis drained jump shots, sunk buzzer beaters, and took the lane through a wall of much taller players with her arms and legs fully covered and a traditional
hijab
scarf wrapping her head.

I
visited Bilqis at her Springfield home on an early summer day. Aidan came along, lured by the promise of a visit to the Hall of Fame. Bilqis was home from Memphis for a few weeks of family time before returning for training. She met us in the front yard of her yellow-sided house wearing a Gap sweatshirt and a black head scarf and greeted us with a shy smile and polite handshake. She's soft-spoken and humble but exudes a kind of don't-mess-with-me determination and confidence, all characteristics that seem to run in the family. Her father, a limo driver, was in the driveway washing his car. Her mother, who has run a day-care center out of the house for 30 years, was busy minding her grandchildren, who were chasing each other in circles. Both are converted Muslims who have raised their eight children within their adopted faith.

From as early as Bilqis can remember, she had a basketball in her hands and an uncanny ability to find the hole in any defense.

“We had a little-tike Nerf hoop in the living room,” she said, showing Aidan the spot where it was set up. “My brothers would play against me on their knees.”

“Really? How many brothers?” Aidan asked.

“At least two. I was
always
being double-teamed, but that's how you learn, right?”

Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir playing for New Leadership, 2009.

From there it was driveway ball, AAU programs, and countless miles of road trips—but academics always came first. Her mother chose to homeschool her youngest rather than subject her to the Springfield public school system, where her older brothers had gotten “mixed up in stuff.” When eighth grade came around, her AAU coaches encouraged her to attend one of the large public schools with established basketball programs. But her mother was having none of it. So off she went to New Leadership, a school with no girls basketball program to speak of and no gym to call its own.

It helped that her brother Yusuf had found both academic and athletic success there, having helped lead his varsity team to the 2004 state championship. As Bilqis was entering her new school, her brother was heading to Division II Bentley College on a full scholarship.

“That girl
defined
scrappy,” recalled Joe of the four-foot, ten-inch, 80-pound girl who showed up that year to play on his new team. “Her jersey was hanging off her. But then she goes out in her first game and scores forty-three points, sixteen steals, ten assists. We were all like—whoa!”

In her freshman year, following Islamic law, she had to begin covering up. There was never a question of whether she would. She was devoted to her faith and to the sacrifice and discipline it required of her. That included playing on an empty stomach while fasting during Ramadan, pulling over on the side of the road or ducking into the nurse's office to pray five times a day. But covering up was still a huge hurdle for a self-conscious teen to overcome, let alone a rising athlete like Bilqis.

She remembered the first day her mother dropped her off at practice in her new attire. “I was crying, I was so scared. I didn't know what my friends were going to say.”

She also didn't know about Under Armour.

“My mom and I were still figuring out what I should wear. I had these heavy cotton sweatpants, long cotton shirts, cotton head scarf. I was so hot and uncomfortable.”

Her coaches stood behind her commitment. They began researching light, breathable fabrics, looking for the perfect balance between high-tech comfort and
hijab
modesty. But there was still the social discomfort of being a symbol of Muslim identity in post-9/11 America. Enough referees questioned her attire that the team had to carry a letter of permission from the Massachusetts Athletic Association. Although she wasn't the first Muslim woman to play at that level, the precedent wasn't encouraging. The previous year, University of South Florida co-captain Andrea Armstrong was forced to quit the team when her conversion to Islam and adoption of the dress code led to a reprimand from her coach and hate mail from fans.

I asked Bilqis if she'd experienced similar incidents with spectators or rivals.

She shrugged the question off. “Most players and fans were totally respectful, but there were definitely some who said things.”

Her mother, who'd been sitting in the kitchen within earshot, chimed in.

“It was hard to watch sometimes. I remember once, she was taking the ball in from the sideline and behind her some idiot yelled ‘Terrorist!' I hate to say it, but that kind of thing happens off the court too.”

Her father, who wears his gray beard long following Muslim custom, relayed a recent experience of his own from the day when the news broke of Osama bin Laden's killing.

“I go into the store to get the paper and the owner holds up the headline and asks me if I'm going to cut my beard now. Then he says, ‘Only kidding.' Can you believe that? Why would he think that's funny?”

Bilqis never let the insults and trash talk get to her, though, and in four years never got a technical foul. Her standard line, coming back to the bench after an incident was, “It's okay.” Then she'd go back in and unleash buckets of fury in response. By the end of her freshman year she had topped 1,000 points and by senior year she was averaging 40 points a game. The recruitment letters started arriving in the mail.

“They were double-teaming her when she
didn't
have the ball, literally stuck to her like glue,” Joe said. “When she got the ball she'd have to drive through triple teams or more but she'd always find a way to the basket. I'd never seen anything like it. It was the Qisi show.”

Bilqis started her senior year with 2,300 points—just 400 points shy of Lobo's record—and word began to spread.

“Scouts started calling, ESPN started calling, there was a fever building around her quest for the record,” said Joe.

But beyond the media swirl, the greatest effect was within the community. Bilqis became a household name and a symbol of pride, not just for Muslims, and not just for the black community, but for a city in need of a hero—a basketball hero, no less. By mid-January she was within 38 points of the record and playing at the Hoop Hall Classic tournament at Springfield College. Rebecca Lobo arrived with her family, wishing luck to her heir apparent as TV cameras rolled.

“I wasn't really focused on the record,” said Bilqis. “I just wanted to win the game.”

New Leadership was down by 18 with 31 seconds left. She had 36 points when she fired an open three-pointer from 24 feet and it bounced out. She'd have to wait another game for her big moment.

The next game was supposed to be at the small elementary school gym that New Leadership borrowed for home games, but it needed to be moved to Commerce High to accommodate the crowd of more than 1,000. Bilqis was nervous that night, knowing recruiters, WNBA coaches, reporters, and the mayor of Springfield were all going to be in the stands. It took a long time for her to catch her rhythm and get on the board. Finally she got fouled and put up her 2,711th point, anticlimactically, on a free throw.

As she pursued the record and became a media sensation, Bilqis had to get comfortable with the idea of being more than just another talented ballplayer. She came to embrace her role as a symbol of hope and inspiration for people. She knew that every time she stepped out on the court she was opening minds and challenging stereotypes of Muslim women. And she played her part knowing that she was just building on a long legacy, that she owed a debt to a long list of pioneers who “cleared the lane” for her and made her achievement possible.

S
enda Berenson, the “founding mother” of women's basketball, arrived at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, in 1892 at the age of 24 to be “director of physical culture.” A Lithuanian immigrant who had come to Boston with her family when she was seven, Berenson found herself cordially accepted but socially isolated as the only Jewish staff member on a Christian campus of 800. One former student's description of her gives a hint of the kinds of bias she confronted. “She was smart and attractive, and not particularly Jewish . . . I mean some Jewish people are very different-looking from others and she was very attractive looking and perfectly dressed.”

Berenson was intelligent and focused, a woman with a mission: “Many of our young women are well enough in a way, yet never know the joy of mere living, are lazy, listless and lack vitality,” she wrote of the challenge she had come to take on. Like Naismith, she inherited her own group of incorrigibles and was challenged to find physical activities that were both fun and appropriate for a young Victorian woman to engage in. She came upon Naismith's article in the
Triangle
newsletter about the new game that he'd invented in Springfield, just 20 miles south, and decided to give it a try with her class.

According to Naismith's accounts, women were already playing at the YMCA Training School before Berenson staged the first organized game. A few teachers who had been coming by at lunchtime to watch the men play asked Naismith whether he saw any reason why women couldn't play as well. “I told them that I saw no reason why they should not,” he replied. “I shall never forget the sight that they presented in their long trailing dresses with leg-of-mutton sleeves, and in several cases with the hint of a bustle. In spite of these handicaps, the girls took the ball and began to shoot at the basket.”

Naismith's openness to having women play his game was progressive for the time. Women had, of course, been playing ball and chipping away at the glass ceiling of sports for centuries. As early as 1427, a young Flemish woman named Margot, dubbed the “Joan of Arc of Tennis,” became the sensation of Paris for humbling the city's best male
jeu de paume
players while playing both backhand and forehand—without a racket. A century or so later Mary, Queen of Scots, an avid golfer, ran afoul of the church for hitting the links just a few days after her second husband's passing. Women were joining the scrum in folk football games for as long as there are records of the games, though they were barred from formal Association play until the late 1890s. And Jane Austen in 1798 was among the first to write of the joys of baseball, with organized women's teams following around 70 years later.

Despite this proud if erratic history, the idea that girls and women could withstand and even benefit from the rigors of athletic competition was still regarded as controversial. Members of the “fairer sex” were seen as physically and emotionally frail, their bodies designed by nature for childbearing and little more. Women were not allowed to vote or own property. And the prevailing attitudes of the day toward sexuality dictated that they be bound in tight corsets and wrapped in yards of fabric, making basic movement a chore. “Until recent years,” wrote Berenson, “the so-called ideal woman was a small waisted, small footed, small brained damsel, who prided herself on her delicate health, who thought fainting interesting, and hysterics fascinating.”