A wise man knows what he doesn’t know and where to go for the answers.
So Maurice Garner was a lot smarter than he thought he was in 2002 when he became Crane’s girls basketball coach. It was his first job as a varsity head coach, and one of his earliest moves was to ask legendary Marshall coach Dorothy Gaters for advice.
Gaters, whose teams have won seven state championships, gave him three helpful hints: stress discipline, defense and a family atmosphere.
The last pointer was particularly crucial because Garner was welcoming a talented group of freshmen that first season, and he needed to keep them together and happy through what figured to be growing pains. This was, in fact, so talented a group that four of its members would become immediate varsity starters.
If that seemed a bit drastic, consider that Crane truly had nowhere to go but up. It then played in the Chicago Public League’s Green Division, now defunct but then the lowest among the three tiers of the league’s basketball teams and home to players who mostly struggled to master even the basic fundamentals.
“When they told us we were in the low division and we were the ones who had to build things up, that was our motivation,” said 6-foot-2-inch senior forward Kenyatta Shelton, one of those four freshmen. “It was like a wake-up call–`Wow, what can we do to get us up there?'”
“There” was the land of the Marshalls and Youngs, and now, in his fourth season, Garner has steered his team to that shore.
They truly arrived in this brave new world last Friday, when Crane defeated Marshall 51-45 for its first victory over the visiting Commandos.
This is so far not even one of Gaters’ average teams, but Marshall is still Marshall, and Garner and his players reacted to their triumph as though they were some would-be apprentices who had just outfoxed Donald Trump in a land deal.
That was particularly true of senior point guard Brittany Elliott, who had idolized Gaters as a kid and considered playing for her until deciding it would be more fun to help build a winner than to sustain one.
“So it meant a lot to go down in history as one of the few teams to beat Miss Gaters,” Elliott said. “It felt good at the end of the day to go home and say, `We just beat Marshall.'”
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It felt euphoric for Garner, a 1977 Crane graduate who played football for the Cougars but has been a basketball coach there since taking over the girls frosh-soph team in 1989.
When he got the varsity head job, he took one look at his freshmen and made Shelton, Elliott, shooting guard Lanikia Lawrence and forward Latatiana White starters, jobs they have held since.
“We took a chance and started them on the varsity,” Garner said. “I saw the talent that was there and figured if we could work with that talent these girls could be special at this point.
“People always ask me how this happened. I always say I was blessed to have a group like them.
“They work hard together. They are a very special group.”
They were special that rookie year, at least by Green Division standards, winning the Green West title to earn a spot in the Blue West. A year later Crane won the title in that league, boosting it into the elite Windy City Conference, where it would regularly face Marshall and Young.
The Cougars did it by taking to heart Garner’s emphasis on defense and bonding like the family Gaters had told him they needed to be.
“We call each other sisters and cousins and stay over at each others’ places,” Lawrence said. “We just hang out.”
Their success also reflected their passion for basketball.
“We just brought our positive energy,” Shelton said. “We had heart and worked hard.”
They finished 25-5 last season, and though they showed they belonged on the same court with Marshall and Young, they couldn’t find a way to beat them. Crane lost once to Marshall and three times to Young.
It finally got over the hump against Marshall last week, building a 15-point third-quarter lead and holding on behind 16 points and 11 rebounds from Shelton, who became Crane’s first Division I girls basketball recruit in memory when she signed with Illinois State last month.
Shelton described the victory as “like a relief . . . like a weight that was finally lifted,” though more a matter of anticipation than overcoming pressure.
“It’s like when you’re a kid and you get new gym shoes or your mom takes you to Great America,” she said. “You can’t wait to get there, and it feels great when you get there.”
The 17th-ranked Cougars didn’t quite make it Wednesday at home against No. 5 Young, but Crane (6-1) kept the Windy City West game close into the third quarter before losing 58-47. It was one more sign its players deserve the recognition that is finally coming their way.
“People don’t underestimate us any more,” Shelton said.
“When we walk into other gyms now, we’re recognized,” Elliott added. “It feels good to have that type of respect.”
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