The gymnasium is quiet now, and the Pied Piper of one of the more fascinating prep basketball teams in America is standing out on the slate gray synthetic basketball court.
He's not complaining, mind you. He's amused.
"Look at this floor," Aaron Lee says with a soft laugh, his feet pawing at a tiled surface that looks like the sort of dull linoleum you'd find in a dingy cafeteria. "Now tell me, does this look like the kind of court that an overly ambitious prep school would have for its basketball team?"
The coach lets out a deep laugh.
"This floor ought to tell you how big everyone's dreams were when they decided to launch this thing. I don't think anyone but me knew what we could do. I wanted hardwood. I got this."
Aaron Lee knows what you are thinking. You have heard that a talent-rich, nationally recognized prep basketball program sprung up almost overnight in the middle of a small college town in the heart of Southern Illinois. You have heard that they have stocked it with tall and talented kids from Nigeria and Cameroon, Latvia and Chicago, Canada, Florida and Carbondale, too. You have heard that in less than two years of the basketball program's existence, a prep school previously known internationally only for its outstanding work with educating junior-high and senior high school students with complex learning disabilities has suddenly become a haven for some remarkable high school hoop talent and is luring college recruiters from across the country to this tiny gymnasium with the funky floor.
And if you are not skeptical, you are, at the very least, extremely curious.
"I'm glad you're here," Lee said. "Dig as much as you want. You can dig all the way to China. This isn't one of those fly-by-night operations that we've all read about where they get a basketball team and build some phony school around it. Brehm isn't a bad story. This is a great story. This is a success story. Go ahead and look. You'll see."
So here we are, armed with a healthy dose of... curiosity.
I have called around the country to any number of college coaches, well-respected men without agendas. They didn't want to be quoted because they wanted to avoid even the appearance of discussing potential blue-chip recruits. But here's what I heard when I mentioned Brehm Prep and Aaron Lee:
They told me Brehm Prep really is a good story. It's not a perfect story, but it does appear to be a good one, and here's why. They say good work is being done there. They say Lee, with the specific help of educational programs at Brehm, is helping kids.
"It's not just basketball, it's about the whole kid," said Dr. Brian Brown, the school's associate director. "Through some of Aaron's basketball experiences and what we've done historically, we began to pursue creating a more competitive basketball team. When we first decided to do this, there was a little naivete. We didn't know what we didn't know."
What Brown didn't know was how much skepticism would greet them, and with good reason. Over the past four years, the NCAA has passed a series of legislation designed to expose fraudulent prep schools and fly-by-night diploma-mill high schools and to prevent high school athletes with low grades from taking fluff courses at those schools to increase their chances of playing college sports.
In 2006, the NCAA was empowered to scrutinize schools that are not accredited by state or regional agencies. Over the early part of the past decade, dozens of rather unscrupulous institutions sprang up across the country, providing fake grades to elite high school basketball players. The most obvious sinners would create these teams first, then build an illegitimate school around them.
Lee tried to warn them what to expect, but Brown and other administrators at Brehm were still a bit stunned with the reception. "At some level we appreciate that some people would look at us and say, 'Hey what are they doing there? Is this a fly-by-night kind of deal? What's their vested interest in what they're trying to pursue?'" Brown said. "But I think until you start going through it, you can't truly begin understanding what that (skepticism) is like. But I can tell you that our desire and mission is to help these kids grow both academically and physically as best we can. Knowing what we're in this for is helpful in dealing with whatever skepticism we might receive in the process."
Lee laughed when the conversation came to this inevitable point. "I told them that the skepticism would come," he said. "But I also told them that skepticism is great because that skepticism will give more people a reason to visit our school and see what Brehm truly is; I want them to see that we've spent 27 years with our mission and what we're really about."
I told Lee that if perceptions were all they were made out to be, he might want to think about changing his résumé a bit. Name me two other professions in American sports that come loaded with more negative images attached to them than a guy who is both an AAU summer league coach and a prep school basketball coach.
"It's true, it is true," Lee said, laughing heartily. "The perception is that 'AAU' is a four-letter word."
Dr. Brown, ever the educator, interrupted.
"It is a three-letter word though, so let's clarify that," Brown wisecracked.
"But you know what?" Lee said. "I've been an AAU coach for 15 years, and the great thing is, most of our kids do have learning difficulties, so for the last 15 years — even before Brehm had a big-time basketball team — we were able to run a summer program in this gym every day that helped those kids once school let out. They didn't go to Brehm, so because scholarships weren't available at the time, we were able to use our resources to help them to the next level of learning."
Brown pointed out that Lee has worked at Brehm for 17 years, working as everything from a dorm parent and resident assistant to the summer basketball coach and an assistant in the independent living program at the school.
"To cast him in the light of 'Oh, he's an AAU coach' does him a disservice because the reality is his role is much broader than that in his involvement here," Brown said. "He has been immersed in this environment for 17 years. ... It's easy to see why people would say, 'Hmm what are they doing over there?' until you do some work."
INTERNATIONAL ROSTER
So what exactly are they doing over there?
Yes, the good folks at Brehm make no apologies for wanting to upgrade their school's national profile via a nationally recognized basketball team. After 10 years of planning, the administration and parents raised scholarship funds (tuition for the boarding school is over $56,000 annually) for student-athletes with learning disabilities.
Last year, they brought in two kids from Africa — 6-foot-9 Emmanuel Ochenje and 6-7 James "Bamba" Siakam, whom ChicagoHoops.com ranked among the top 10 prep players in Illinois. This year, the roster of 12 players is stocked with three kids from Canada, two from Latvia, two from Cameroon, one from Chicago, one from Carbondale, and one from Florida and two Nigerians. According to ChicagoHoops.com, four players are among the top 20 players in the state.
Recruiters from Kentucky, Illinois, Memphis, Oklahoma, LSU, Harvard, Wisconsin, Wisconsin-Green Bay, Ohio State, Southern Illinois Carbondale, SIU-Edwardsville, East Carolina, Notre Dame and Missouri State have visited Brehm's gym.
Many of those recruiters are sure to be over at East St. Louis High School on Monday afternoon for the Martin Luther King Junior Classic, where Brehm will be on display along with several top high school teams from the Midwest. Brehm, which was just accredited by the Illinois High School Association, is not eligible for the state playoffs because it plays a mixed schedule of nationally ranked high school and junior-college programs, plus the occasional game with an outmatched college JV team. The MLK Classic will be only the sixth time Brehm has played a high school team this season.
"We can't right now join a local high school league because it really doesn't benefit the program," Lee said. "We won't get the competition we need. What good does it do to beat someone 120-30? It doesn't help us and it doesn't help them."
Last week, they easily defeated the junior varsity squad from an NAIA school named Mid-Continent University out of Mayfield, Ky., 109-88. By halftime, the Bears led by 25 points, then let their outmanned opponents cut the lead to 68-63 midway through the second half before going on a dazzling 13-0 run to close out any hope of a comeback.
Lee got off the bench only to call a timeout once the entire game. His team is overstocked with talent, so much so that even on a night when he suspended two of his top players — Andre Henley and Mike Liabo — for unspecified disciplinary reasons, and two more starters were out with injuries, you still got to see just how many gifted kids Brehm has.
There is 6-9 senior Oto Osenieks from Riga, Latvia, who kept draining 3-pointers from every spot beyond the arc. There was junior Bruce Barron, a 6-4 guard whose older brother Justin Dentmon played at the University of Washington. The point guard is senior Daniel Daudu, a 6-footer who knows how to distribute the ball to all these talented players. Basically, there isn't a single player on this roster who won't likely end up playing college basketball on some level.
"This is a great place to come to get your education and play basketball," said Daudu, a very soft-spoken but quiet, thoughtful young man who arrived at Brehm two years ago from Nigeria and has not seen his family since. "It's not an easy thing, but it has become a home away from home. But they push you hard and it's been a great transition so far."
Daudu, a member of the Nigerian national team who says he will accept a scholarship to SIU-Edwardsville, doesn't worry about any stigmas being placed on him when people learn he plays at a prep school designed for students with learning disabilities. "No, I don't feel bad about it," he said. "Everyone looks at us as a school for learning disabilities, but I can bet you that the kids that go here are as smart as anyone at any other school.
"When we first got here, we would be out in places around town and people would ask 'Where do you go to school?' We would say, 'Brehm,' and they would look at us and say, 'That's no place for you. What are you doing going there?' and I would say, 'You need to come onto the complex. There are great kids here, kids that can challenge you, kids who are going to be something, kids that can run computer programs that you could never do, kids that can draw the way you could never draw, kids that explain things in ways that you could never explain things. Everybody has issues in their life, everyone has a difficulty. So I don't feel bad about it. The guys don't feel bad about it. That's just outside talk."
AN "AWAKENING"
As we said before, this is a good story, but it's not a perfect one. If you talk to Lee or the teachers and administrators such as Dr. Brown, they will tell you that everyone on the team has some sort of "learning difficulty."
"If you look across the spectrum of college athletics, a lot of student-athletes have learning disabilities, either diagnosed or undiagnosed," Lee said. "We've just begun to understand what that means. A lot of the colleges now have LD services.
"So when you go back over the years and look at some of those athletes who weren't graduating ... what you would find is that what might have been holding them back was learning disabilities that may have gone undiagnosed. Now you have all these programs and support systems, so there has been an awakening of the minds nationwide."
But it's difficult to determine whether these tall and talented young men at Brehm really do have "learning difficulties" or if they are simply uncomfortable talking about that with strangers.
When I asked Daniel Daudu what his learning disability was — and with his coach sitting only a few feet away — he did not hesitate. "I don't really have a learning disability," he said. "I just have a low process of learning math. I used to hate going to math class. But now it is one of my favorite classes."
When I asked Emmanuel Ochenje if he had a learning disability, he too did not hesitate.
"No, I don't," he said. "When I first got here, I noticed that people in the community look at you differently when they find out you go to Brehm. I always have to tell them, 'We came here to play ball and to get an education.' I tell them that Brehm is not just about disabilities. It's about preparing you as best as possible for college. I tell anyone that asks me, 'We came down here to get an education and play ball,' and all that other talk doesn't matter to me."
But this rather well-spoken young man admits that he has trouble with standardized tests like the ACT because of its timed elements and the fact that he is still not as comfortable with the English language as he needs to be.
"So that's what is so good about Brehm," he said. "When I leave here now after the game, I will go back to the dorm and have study hall. And if I still don't understand something, I can go to a tutor and spend as much time as I need in the evening. The English part of those tests are still a little difficult for me."
Lee and Brown say there are no exceptions at Brehm for the basketball players. They tell you that every student who goes to Brehm must first be tested by an independent agency to assess what sort of LD or "difficulty" they have.
"We have nothing to hide," Lee said. "What we're doing here is good work for kids who need the help. It is about basketball, but it's not all about basketball. We're here to help kids who otherwise wouldn't get it. If people want to doubt us, that's OK. I know what we're doing here. This is a good story. This is a great story. Tell everybody what we're doing here."
