By Chris Umpierre
Daily Bruin Staff
While Jason Kapono is thinking about Hofstra and the NCAA
tournament, he’ll also be thinking about the difference
between the Fourth and 13th U.S. Amendments. The same time the UCLA
forward is studying scouting reports on Hofstra’s leading
scorer Norman Richardson, he’ll be contemplating the
significance of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson court case.
You see, Kapono has a final in History 151B, U.S. Constitutional
History, on Monday morning. He’s worried he won’t have
enough time to prepare for the exam because his No. 4 seeded Bruins
have NCAA tournament games on Thursday and possibly Saturday. They
play the first and possible second round games in Greensboro, N.C.,
and in between practices and games, Kapono will be reading books
such as David O’Brien’s “Constitutional Law and
Politics.”
Juggling academics with basketball will be a tough task for
Kapono and his teammates during the next two weeks.
“This is the part that nobody thinks about,” UCLA
senior guard Jason Flowers said. “Everybody thinks that UCLA
basketball is all peaches and cream. That we have everything all
made for us. We have to take finals just like everybody
else.”
If the Bruins move past the second round, they will play in the
Sweet Sixteen during finals week on Thursday, March 22, in
Philadelphia.
Since UCLA prefers to travel two days before the event, many
players who have finals scheduled Tuesday through Friday will not
be in town to take them.
Several players, such as shooting guard Billy Knight, have
already prepared for that possibility.
“A lot of times the professors are real friendly and
they’ll let me take the finals either before I leave or when
I come back,” he said. “Two of my classes are take-home
(finals) so I’ll probably do them on the road.”
UCLA History Professor Mary Corey, who teaches many of the
basketball players in her History of California course, is one such
professor who sympathizes with the plight of student athletes.
“Just like if someone in a student’s family is
having surgery or if they have to go home to take care of a sick
mother, I believe you have to work with student-athletes on these
things,” she said.
She argues that not only does the basketball team have to
perform the difficult act of juggling basketball and school, they
also must do it under a cloud of prejudice that assumes they are
dumb jocks.
“This notion of student-athletes, particularly basketball
players, not being smart and just getting a free ride is not fair
in my view,” Corey said. “My student-athletes do my
work and they do it under conditions that I wouldn’t want to
do them under.”
She recalled a recent incident she had with a colleague in a
campus elevator. Corey had just received midterms from the
basketball team, which the players had to turn in two days late
because they were playing on the road. With midterms in hand, she
entered the elevator.
“The colleague, which shall remain nameless, said,
“˜What are those?'” Corey recalled. “And I
said, “˜These are the midterms from the basketball
team,’ and the colleague said, “˜Well that
shouldn’t take long (to grade), they will all be the
same.'”
“That’s an outrageous thing to say. Student-athletes
often face that kind of prejudice from academics who assume they
are schmoes. But you tell me that Earl Watson hasn’t got a
lot out of his education. I’m proud that I’m his
teacher. Todd Ramasar, Jason Flowers, Billy Knight ““ all
these people have grown up (academically).”
The intermediary between the professors and the student-athletes
on the basketball team is full-time academic counselor Mike
Casillas. His job is to constantly check on the progress of the
players in the classroom.
During the quarter, he gets progress reports on every player in
every class he has and meets with the coaching staff on a weekly
basis.
With finals around the corner, this is the most hectic time for
Casillas.
He’ll be holding study halls in the team’s North
Carolina hotel this weekend. He will also proctor some exams during
the weekend for those players who have arranged with their
professors to take the exams early.
Of course, juggling basketball with school was part of what the
players signed up for when they decided to come to UCLA, a
university known as much for its academics as for its basketball
prowess.
The juggling act has been so difficult in recent years that it
has claimed several players along the way. A year ago, forward Matt
Barnes was deemed academically ineligible for the fall 1999
quarter, forcing him to miss the first five games of the
season.
This season the basketball team made news when two players
registered grade-point averages of 1.0 or D-level during the fall
quarter.
The players’ chore of studying for finals and writing
papers while preparing for a quality Hofstra team and the NCAA
tournament is not something a lot of UCLA students would enjoy.
“I’m taking four classes and I have trouble as it is
studying for all my finals,” said Joel Mecklenburg, a senior
economics major. “I can’t imagine dealing with the
pressure of the tourney and still getting all my schoolwork
done.”
One player who is having trouble with the juggling act is
Flowers. The senior is just one class from graduating and has this
question for fellow students: “Hablas
español?”
“If anybody out there wants to tutor me in Spanish 3, put
it in the paper that they can get a hold of me through the
basketball office because I need the help,” he said.