|
|
 |
|
For the rest of his career, Coach K can tell wide-eyed recruits, "Yeah, Kobe wanted me to come and save the Lakers' franchise, but then I wouldn't have had the chance to recruit outstanding young men like you, son." Other schools can never again credibly suggest to recruits that Coach K might abandon them for the pros if they go to Duke, because if he turned down the Lakers, what other offer could lure him away?
--Phil Taylor, Sports Illustrated
|
|
|
|
|
|
Being Shav Randolph
Sunday, March 10, 2002
The News & Observer
By G.D. GEARINO, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - The basic facts of Shavlik Randolph's life are this: He's an 18-year-old senior at Broughton High School. He lives in a comfortable home with his parents and two siblings. He goes to church. He struggles a bit with his grades; chemistry and literature are particularly vexing. When he has a break in his routine, he likes to kill time at the mall with friends. He shares a bedroom with his little brother. He has pictures of sports stars taped to the wall above his bed.
And he plays basketball, with a devotion that borders on obsession.
Basketball has won him a full-ticket scholarship from Duke University, where he'll play for famously intense Mike Krzyzewski. It has shaped his days, his nights, his family, his world. It has made him into a local celebrity.
Imagine what it is like to be Shavlik Randolph: Strangers fawn over you. Coaches known for their ferocity sit in your living room and court you. Young women smile at you fetchingly. People stare when you walk into a restaurant, then huddle over their tables as they confirm that it's really you. Children ask you to sign scraps of paper.
His height, if nothing else, would draw attention. Shavlik is 6-feet-10. He is also preternaturally polite, nodding in agreement when anyone else talks and tacking a 'sir' or 'ma'am' onto the end of almost everything he says. There is also the occasional air of bewilderment about him, but there's little surprise in that. Shavlik is not only making the transition from childhood to adulthood -- as we all do -- but he has two more passages to make as well: the trip from anonymity to celebrity, and the trip from high school ambitions to lofty, possibly crushing, expectations.
Think of almost any university in the country with an ambitious basketball program, and Shavlik probably heard from it. On a light day, there would be dozens of letters, bundled and wrapped in rubber bands. On a normal day, the letters would be hauled into the house in boxes. Kim Randolph, Shavlik's mother, would pile the mail on the kitchen counter.
'In the beginning, I read all of them,' Shavlik says. 'Then I only read the handwritten letters. There would be some days when there would be ridiculous amounts.'
Coaches called and visited. Before he was even old enough to vote, Shavlik discovered that he could make a grown man become as giddy as a teenage girl simply by smiling and saying, 'Hiya, coach.'
How does any high schooler lead a normal life in the face of that kind of attention?
The answer is, he doesn't.
The prospect of a 'normal' life evaporated virtually at the moment he was born. He was 24 inches long, which made him the talk of the maternity ward at Rex Hospital. He also carried a remarkable basketball gene in his DNA.
The young basketball star's full name is Ronald Shavlik Randolph. The first two of his names are familiar to many Triangle old-timers, especially Wolfpack fans. His maternal grandfather, Ronnie Shavlik, was an All-America center at N.C. State University in the 1950s. In February 1983, before his grandson was born, Ronnie Shavlik was diagnosed with cancer and told he had months to live. His daughter Kim and her husband, Kenny Randolph, wanted him to have the chance to hold a grandchild in his arms before he died.
'Mr. Shavlik was like a father to me, who I respected and loved,' Kenny Randolph says. 'Kim and I tried to get pregnant, and God blessed us.'
Ronnie Shavlik died on June 27, 1983, and his grandson was born on Nov. 24. It was Thanksgiving Day, and his parents had the eerie feeling that Ronnie Shavlik's spirit was lingering in the room. (Two more children followed. A daughter, Senna, 16, also plays basketball at Broughton. The youngest, 12-year-old Dexter, is less avid about the sport.)
Neither Kim nor Kenny pushed Shavlik into basketball. His mother nudged him toward soccer, which Shavlik played in elementary school. By middle school, Shavlik had made his choice. He wanted to play basketball. Only basketball.
'This was totally on his own,' Kim Randolph says.
On his own, too, he developed an amazing work ethic -- one that from a distance can look like an obsession. After the regular team practice, he practices with his father. He practices on Saturdays. Sometimes he meets Jeff Ferrell, the Broughton coach, in the gym on Sunday mornings to practice before church. At home in the evenings, he eats dinner in the den while he watches -- do you really have to be told? -- basketball on television.
Shavlik explains this monomania in simple terms that reflect his firmly held Christian faith. 'My focus comes mostly from God,' he says. 'My biggest gift is my desire, my focus. I have two choices. I can be like any other normal kid, or I can separate myself. I just don't see why someone would attempt to do something and not want to be the best. I can't just sit and not try to be the best.'
There was an early payoff to this single-mindedness. During the summer after Shavlik's ninth-grade year, N.C. State coach Herb Sendek sought out Kenny Randolph to tell him he would reserve a scholarship for Shavlik three years hence.
At the time, Shavlik had yet to start a game for Broughton High School.
Celebrity in the making
There is a hidden benefit to Shavlik's compulsive focus on basketball. It forms a cocoon, which shields him from the ancillary weirdness that comes with being a celebrity in the making.
The more time he spends on basketball, the less time Shavlik has to ponder the ways in which his life is unlike anyone else's. He doesn't have a driver's license. He doesn't have a girlfriend. He has never had a summer job.
When he goes to the mall to hang around, 'some people come up to me and want to talk to me, do stuff. People I don't even know,' Shavlik says. 'That can be a little irritating.'
Then there's the student who attends Broughton games wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with the words, 'Shav is my daddy.' The other students who nudge one another and whisper as he walks down the hall. The N.C. State student who has become a one-woman fan club.
The fan, a young woman from Raleigh named Kim Wu, shows up at virtually every game, and occasionally sends Shavlik drawings of him that she has made. Once she followed the team bus back to the high school after a road game and serenaded Shavlik in the parking lot.
'I'm always trying to find ways to thank him for everything he does for me,' Wu says. 'Having him in my life has made it so much better.'
Like Shavlik, Wu -- a 19-year-old freshman -- doesn't drive. A friend takes her to the games, where she sometimes is awarded a brief conversation with Shavlik. If she's slightly obsessive in her determination to see him at every opportunity, there's a reason, Wu says. Once Shavlik goes to Duke, where tickets are famously difficult to obtain, 'I'll never get the chance to see him play again in person. This is my last chance,' she says. 'It makes me really sad.'
Shavlik and his parents are all quick to point out that girls do not figure into his life at this point. They are 'out of his comfort level,' Kim Randolph says. (So are cars, but for a different reason: Shavlik doesn't fit in them. Hence the lack of interest in a license.)
The wisdom in this course of action can be found in what Kim Randolph delicately refers to as 'the Shelden Williams incident.'
Williams is another Duke recruit, the only member of Duke's storied recruiting class ranked higher than Shavlik among the country's top prospects. After a tournament in Ohio in January, Williams and two teammates were named in a rape complaint filed by a Columbus woman. Williams spent several days dealing with the accusation before the woman decided she did not wish to press charges.
For Kim Randolph, this was a cautionary tale that she thought she needed to repeat to Shavlik.
'She'll try to lecture me about stuff and I tell her, 'You don't have to worry about me.' I really don't put myself in that situation,' Shavlik says. 'I don't think I have to worry about that.'
Good thing. He has other things to fret over.
The pressure is on
First and foremost is making the jump from high-school basketball to the pressure cooker of big-time college hoops.
At Broughton, Shavlik's size alone would make him a standout. That he also is an accomplished shooter and ball-handler makes him a national star. Last week, Shavlik was named to the McDonald's All-American High School Basketball Team, a collection of national all-stars that will play in Madison Square Garden on April 4. It's an honor he shares with dozens of recognizable names -- Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter, Patrick Ewing, Grant Hill, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan among them.
An impressive number of McDonald's All-Americans became college stars, and half went on to play in the NBA. If Shavlik's career at Duke turns out to be merely solid but unspectacular, he almost surely will be labeled an underachiever.
Shavlik expresses confidence (and proves that he has nailed the post-game sound bite): 'I know Duke has high expectations, but my expectations for myself are higher than [Duke's coaches] can imagine.'
Already, before he has played a single college game, Shavlik has gotten a taste of the fickle spotlight. As a junior, he was widely regarded as the top college prospect in the class of 2002. When he hurt his foot last spring, which hampered his play in a special tournament game, Internet chat sites were suddenly filled with declarations that Shavlik was overrated.
His mother can't bear to hear people talk that way. That's why she won't go to his games. 'I know how much of an expectation other people have for him,' she says. 'I just can't stand it.'
The Internet also taught that his every utterance is now considered part of the public domain. After he'd decided to attend Duke -- but before he'd announced it -- the news appeared on a Web site. Shavlik had to scramble to call the coaches from the four other finalist schools so they could hear it from him first.
Kenny Randolph says the family eventually figured out that a fellow Broughton student overheard Shavlik make a reference to attending Duke and leaked the news.
There was at least one benefit. The endless telephone calls from recruiting analysts and Web operators -- all seeking the first hint of Shavlik's decision -- finally ended. Now, Shavlik gets a different kind of feedback from strangers. 'I'll hear people saying, 'You should have gone to UNC, man,' ' he says.
For all his newfound awareness that he is a public figure at 18, Shavlik won't give up one thing: his fart machine.
When Shavlik and his buddy William Kane find themselves in a crowded place -- at the mall or in the hallway at school -- William will hide the device in his clothes and Shavlik will take the remote control. When William has maneuvered his way into a crowd, Shavlik will hit the button on the remote control.
It's an acceptable division of joke labor for both boys. 'You can't embarrass William,' Shavlik says.
And for a moment, no one is paying attention to him.
|
|
|
|
|
Cameron Crazies -
Ironically, the best profile of the Cameron Crazies was written by a Duke Student. The article is entitled "You Suck". Thank you Matt Sullivan. No one could have said it better.
A former Cameron Crazy has some really interesting comments on the current Crazies
Anyway-
The Cameron Crazies are portrayed by idiots like Dick Vitale as 'superfans' - better
than any other student body in the nation. Vitale even says 'It all started with the Cameron Crazies and has now spread across the country'.
Sure, they have a tradition of providing a 'unique' atmosphere and making a lot of noise. They also have a bit of a funny history. Here's another article detailing some of their 'funnier' moments.
But is there much substance beyond their act?
There is plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.
To begin, Coach K has been down on the Crazies lately. Take a look at this article: Krzyzewski unhappy with Crazies' lack of passion.
Here's a
more recent article - Putting the K in Crazies, which is about Coach K trying to spark the Crazies interest in Duke Basketball.
Also, in December 2003, Coach K had the Crazies stop a 'Fire Mike Jarvis' cheer during a game.
Additionally, in Feb. 2004, Coach K was mad at the Crazies for their lack of support.
Another myth is that the Crazies never cross the line of 'decent' fan behavior. This is not so - Look at this excerpt from a Duke Alumni magazine article:
In 1991 and 1992, when such celebrations degenerated into unruly and dangerous situations, dozens of injuries resulted from drunken assaults;
students trying to run through, or being pushed into, the fire; and bottles being thrown into the crowds. More than a dozen students ended up in the
emergency room of Duke Hospital with second- and third-degree burns
also, from this washington post article:
Duke basketball had acquired, along with the heady joys of national championships, a dangerous and destructive tradition called bench burning. After a big win, students dragged the wooden benches outside their dorms into a big bonfire in the middle of Clocktower Quadrangle and got as drunk as possible to heighten the effect. There were serious burns from students falling or being pushed into the fire. There were broken bones from benches dropping on legs and arms. Police officers were hit in the head with bottles.
Even the good folks at the Chronicle acknowledge that the Crazies are hyprocritical.
Also, there was an incident involving former Georgia Tech guard Tony Akins a couple years ago. link (scroll down):
Hey, you might want to watch your mouth if Georgia Tech guard Tony Akins' mama is in the stands.
Myong Akins was involved in a fight at Duke's Cameron Indoor Stadium recently when she was returning to her seat behind the Tech bench, slipped and
fell and all hell broke loose. She claims a Duke student grabbed her by the hair on the way down, causing Ms. Akins to come up punching.
The female Duke student claims she grabbed Ms. Akins arm to prevent falling herself, but she and Myong Akins came to blows with several punches
thrown before spectators broke up the action.
This from a SI.com article:
The Crazies earned their reputation in the '80s, when overweight opponents were pelted with Twinkies and those accused of sexual misconduct were showered with panties or condoms. Taunts such as "Safety school!" (toward Wake Forest) and "We're smart! You're dumb!" (at UNC) that play off Duke's academic standards continue to anger not only opponents but also many among the 4,000-plus students who don't attend games. Explains Mike Corey, sports editor of the student paper, The Chronicle, "Lots of students don't like the implicit condescension."
Back to criticizing the Crazies, here are some Crazies calling out other Crazies!
From a Duke student's site:
Duke Basketball-say it with respect. It's the reason why I came to Duke, and I'm proud to say that. I think the biggest problem with this University is the
fact that so many students come to Duke not understanding the tradition. This was never more evident than in last year's home loss to Maryland, ending
our home winning streak. I had hoped it taught a lesson, but I was in the stands for our next loss, to St. John's, and I could not believe what I was hearing.
Not the silent walk of depressed people pondering what just happened with the somber Dear Old Duke playing in the background. Not even hysterical sobs
or fits of anger. Instead, I heard people discussing what they were going to do later that night. The team deserved better than that. They certainly deserved
better than the empty seats in the Maryland game as well. It made me wonder, what happened to the student body?
and from another duke student's site :
i was very disappointed with the crazies."...why??? b/c the stadium was quiet at pts...so quiet that i could talk to people next to me w/o struggling, which is
unheard of in Cameron. A very very sad day...they shouldn't let freshmen tent hehehe...there were way too many people watching the game and too few
PARTICIPATING in the game...
Just look at the photos of Duke Students. Would these folks intimidate you?
And why is it that the Crazies are so passionate about their basketball team, while they ignore their football team so much that the DBR must urge students to show up at football games???
Perhaps the problem with the Cameron Crazies lies in the makeup of Duke's student body. Think about it - it isn't a state school that attracts many locals
who have been fans of the school's teams since birth. Rather, just a bunch of nerdy bandwagoners who are more interested in getting on TV and posing for the
camera with their stupid blue hair and their tents than actually watching the game.
Some evidence? Look at this page
- there are photos of the cheerleaders doing dances, talk of K's antics - but what about the game?
Or how about this page. The students list her MANY favorite sports teams. And like many Dookies,
she conviently 'adopts' another school for college football:
Since it doesn't look like Duke is going to have a decent team any time soon, I am trying to decide what team to adopt. I've always sort of liked Michigan
football.
On the bright side, at least one Duke Student finds Cameron as as 'one shining bastion of freedom'
Here is a hilarious article about the myth of the Cameron Crazies - from the perspective of a UNC fan watching a game in 2001.
Dook cheer sheet vs UVA, Jan 2005
Well this is a pretty long entry. Let's end with an excerpt from Bandwagon Boy. He found
a Duke cheer sheet! (Satire at its best!)
Here is the Duke cheer sheet for Temple:
Duke v. Temple
December 5 9:00 PM
Below are some suggestions for cheers that can be done, both for this game and for all games in the future. While these are a start, the great thing about
the Cameron Crazies has always been their lemming-like conformity. The best cheers are the ones that are spelled out in advance, to get rid of any
distracting spontinaety. When a cheer idea pops into your head, write it down! Bring it to the next committee meeting, and we'll run it past some focus
groups. If it's really good, we might work it into the rotation by 2004. But don't be afraid to try something arrogant- it's what makes us what we are.
The key thing to remember is to always be LOUD and be INTENSE. As the game goes on, get LOUDER and more into it, especially if it is on TV. No matter
what the score is. The starters play the entire 40 minutes, so the Dook Dorks need to as well.
CHEERS TO AVOID
1. Anything that's not typed up on your sheet. If you want to express yourself, go cheer for some other team.
2. "Ass-hole" Chant- Coach K. doesn't like this one, so don't do it. His neck gets sore from turning around to see who is calling his name.
3. "D-U-K-E, Who the F%*K you come to see?"- Ths cheer is best saved for bonfires and other postgame celebrations. Coach K has asked us not to use
this cheer in Cameron. So if you are caught doing it, you will be terminated. As in destroyed. We've ruined Duke students before (Price, Newton) and we'll
do it again.
4. "Over-rated" Chant- Perhaps the worst cheer of all time. It hits too close to home.
FOUL-OUT CHEER
The old Crazy trick of chanting "Ahhhhhhhh" until the player sits down is not working. Apparently the other teams didn't read the memo where we explained
that they were supposed to get all mad and upset because we yell at them. Tonight, let's chant "Ahhhhhhhhhh" until the player crosses out-of-bounds to
the bench area. That'll teach 'em!
DUKE PLAYER CHANTS
Again, this is where creativity is key. The best ones (i.e. "Who's your Daddy?") have sprung up in a moment of brilliance during a game. We need to keep
coming up with new ones. Here are some ideas:
Mike D: (he is the tall, skinny white guy, kind of looks like a girl) "Well Dun! CLAP-CLAP Well Dun!"
Jason: "J-Will, J-Will, Rock You!" (to the tune of "We Will Rock You" by a rock combo known as The Queens(?). Look for it in a store that sells musical
recordings. they will have a section called "rock and roll music" that contains recordings of shrill and noisy hippies. We realize that it's not the Duke Way
to frequent such places or listen to such scary music, but we all have to make sacrifices.)
Duhon: the old favorite, "Duh-Duh-Duh-Duhon!"
Boozer: "Boooooz" This one is great because we can boo the kid when he messes up, but Dickie V will tell everyone we are just saying "Booooz." Oh, you
might want to warn your parents about this one if they hear it on TV. Apparently, some college students have been known to consume alcoholic beverages
(I know, it's illegal! Shame!) and I'm told that "booze" is apparently a slang term for certain alcoholic beverages.
Dahntay: He can jump like none other- What can we come up with? Hey that's it: "He can Jump Like None Other!" Clap-clap-clap-clap!
We need ideas for Casey, Nick and Daniel. Suggestions? (Apparently, these guys are players on our roster, even though they haven't been on any
magazine covers, and even though Dickie V. doesn't talk about them that much.)
TEMPLE
Temple will be the other team playing tonight. They will be wearing dark uniforms. Yes, there will really be another team playing against our guys! It's too
bad that they have to let players from other schools play, but Coach K. hasn't been able to put a stop to it yet. Don't worry, our synagogue has a basketball
team, and if this temple team are anything like our synagogue, they won't be a match for Duke!
General tips: Cheer the loudest when our team scores a basket, not when the other team does. A basket is a hoop ten feet in the air. A basketball is that
round orange thing. Our guys are good at putting the basketball into the basket. Some people even care more about that than they do about our cheers, if
you can believe that one. Those men in the black and white striped shirts are called referees. their job is to make sure that Duke slaughters the other team
by as many points as possible. If the other team gets within 20 points in the second half, that means the refs aren't doing their job. Coach K. will be
screaming at them, so just scream the same things he does (only cut out the profanity! We're not Coach K.! No one is!) Try to time your studying so that
you do most of it when the other team has the ball. And keep an eye out for the TV cameras! We want to look good, because we're the show! We lead the
team to victory, and we want to look our best, no matter what happens on the court. (The court is that wooden floor they play basketball on.)"
|
|
|
|
|
|
