GIRLS ARE ON FIRE!

Each summer weekend morning, around 8 a.m, a Lexus SUV, license plate “JCFLEX,” pulls up and parks on East 10th Street, usually close to the northeast corner of Tompkins Square Park, where a gate there leads directly onto the park’s twin basketball courts. Within seconds, a swarm of teenagers in yellow t-shirts reading “NYC JC Pro Classic” descends upon the van and begins to empty it. Out come folding chairs, folding benches, folding tables, banners, brooms, basketballs—well of course there are basketballs—plus a couple of microphones, speakers, a cooler, two scoreboards, and a bevvy of mysterious bags probably full of sports meds and similarly useful gear. Last, out comes the driver. This is Janice Carter, the “JC” of the license plate and the commissioner of the JC Pro Classic Women’s Basketball league. Carter by day is an assistant principal in the NYC school system but she spends the rest of her waking hours running five divisions of girls’ and women’s basketball right here at Tompkins Square Park. Since they arrived at Tompkins seven summers ago, Carter and her young female basketball players have become colorful, energetic, and joyful fixtures in the Lower East Side community. And these girls can play.

A former basketball player herself (and competitive body builder) Carter moves slowly because of recent knee surgery, but she still manages to wrangle her young volunteer helpers—none of whom are players—quietly and effectively through game preparation each Saturday and Sunday morning. As the courts are swept and backboards and nets all checked, the players begin to trickle in, some by car, some by public transport, some on foot from surrounding blocks. It’s now about 8:30. Several  parents are here, too, because these girls are young—the first games today will match up players only 10 years and under. Fathers help tie shoelaces, mothers distribute water, some girls twist and secure their ponytails. A couple of strollers rest between folding chairs. A dog sniffs around. 

Brothers, sisters, cousins and friends are here, too. It’s an odd juxtaposition, as they quickly share the nearby climbing frames and exercise bars with some of Tompkins’ ripped morning workout crews. Behind them, one handball court sees a young boy practicing handball serves; the other has a young girl practicing tennis returns. At the far end of the courts, the refurbished Tompkins swimming pool is getting ready for action, too. A line of parents and eager little paddlers and swimmers has formed already. This busy corner of Tompkins is coming to weekend life!

Around 8:45, a compact, elderly gent carrying a folding chair enters from the Ninth Street entrance, his careful progress assisted by two canes. He seems to be a regular, and the kids on the climbing frames shout to him as they might to a long-lost uncle. “You guys sound like a bunch of birds,” he calls back. “Looks like you all flew up there!” His t-shirt reads, “YOU DON’T SCARE ME: I COACH GIRLS’ BASKETBALL.”

Five minutes later, the first referee shows up, recognizable by—and quite resplendent in—his blue-striped umpire’s shirt and matching shorts. Tom Murphy, a 68-year-old retired teacher, has been reffing games for 20 years, the last three in Tompkins. He cycled this morning from his home on 24th and Second, sporting a large black brace on one knee.

The second ref is running late, but trots in a minute after nine, already in uniform. He checks in with the scorer’s table, and with his colleague in blue, whereupon the refs hold a quick confab with the coaches. 

It is exactly 9:09. By the time the weekend is over, a dozen or so games will have determined a little bit more which teams will compete, weather-permitting, in the JC league finals on this same section of Tompkins on August 22. Nods are exchanged all round, and players shuffle into position—except for two young girls in the center of the court, both knees bent, torsos coiled, eyes burning a hole in the game ball. It’s time for the tip-off. 

And then the first whistle of the weekend blows. Let the games begin! 

These particular games actually began back in the 1980s, and not at Tompkins, but at the holy grail of Manhattan street ball. Carter was a guard on her high school team in Port Washington, Long Island, and would come into New York on weekends with a group of girls to watch games—male only—at the famous “Cage,” on Sixth Avenue between West 3rd and 4th Streets. Then, as now, the games of the West 4^th Street Basketball League on the Cage’s sole court were run by league founder Kenny Graham. Carter was 16 when she met him. “I liked being down by West 4th,” she says. “I liked the environment. But I felt there should be a girls’ league. I asked Kenny why he didn’t have girls, and he said, ‘If you want girls, you get the girls, and you’ll be able to play.’ So I did. 

“There already had been two attempts to start girls’ leagues there,” Carter continues, “but they didn’t last. The first summer, I was able to get enough for six teams just by asking around, then the following year we had eight and then 10, then 12. By this time it had become the only women’s league in town, so it was very easy to get players—I got up to 29 teams! 

“We had one o’clock and three o’clock games in The Cage on Sundays and held our remaining games a few blocks down Sixth, on Houston Street. I did that all the way up to 2018. But I wanted my own league, with younger girls playing too. I could see that the standard of basketball, the level of talent, was falling. The game was going backwards. I thought that if I could get younger girls involved, then we could start developing them earlier with basic skills: how to dribble, to shoot, learn good foot movement, positioning—just basic basketball skills that they should know. 

“There was nowhere else for them to learn all this. You might play on your school basketball team, but once your season was over you didn’t play again until the next season. To be good, to be able to play anywhere, you have to play year-round, train year-round. 

“Our first year was 2018, still on Sixth Avenue, with middle school, high school, and women’s divisions, but the following year we moved to Tompkins, because it had two good courts, and everybody came with me. 

“First we added Elementary, which was 12 and under. Now we have five divisions playing each weekend: 10-Under, 12-Under, 14-Under, High School, and College/Open Women’s. I have teams from all five boroughs, from Long Island, New Jersey, Connecticut, Westchester, Upstate. Teams can join up if they call me, or they find me on social media (addresses at end of story), or sometimes we call them. We call each other!”

All of which takes considerable organization. Carter has a small team behind the scenes that works out the season schedule with her. A friend called Reggie Fowler recruits and assigns referees. On gamedays, most of her support are the youngsters unloading the Lexus at 8 a.m. “In June I have to call around  to see who can help. Same for the last two weeks in August. But for six weeks in July I have workers from New York City’s Summer Youth Employment Program [SYEP, run by the Department of Youth and Community Development].”

In addition to setting and breaking down, the youngsters help with scoring, penalties, timeouts and overall game timing. Watching Carter supervise them is like watching a big-band conductor at work, albeit with a mobile phone. Since her knee surgery, Carter has been unable to roam the courts the way she would like. “I’ll just call the kids on the other court to make sure they’ve prepped the coaches and teams to be ready to play, or maybe I’m just telling them to take a break and grab some lunch. It’s a long day.

“They all know what to do,” Carter adds, laughing, “but they’re high school kids and sometimes high school kids need reminding.”

On the court, meanwhile, the level of play is, even to the experienced player, quite staggering. You can spot the point guards from the Tompkins dog run, always darting around. The shooters and shot-blockers stand out, too. Unlike so many teams of similar age in other sports—soccer springs to mind—all the league’s teams display a discipline well beyond their years. They know to cover opponents and cover for each other. They backpedal easily into position when they lose possession. They maintain team shape. They fight for every loose ball, high or low.

What is shared with other sports is that true talent shows early. “We have a girl now,” says Carter, “who last year could hardly play at all because she was so tiny. But this year she’s dribbling down the court, doing crossovers, going around players—one player, the next player, then the next—and then making a lay-up. Do you know how many boys cannot even make a lay-up?

“It’s really motivating and encouraging for younger girls,” Carter adds. “The game is growing now. We all know that. Girls are more motivated to play, they want to be out there, and I’m giving them somewhere to play. 

“It’s good for the coaches, too. They can figure out what they need to teach, and to do that you have to have girls playing in a game environment. 

“We tell them you gotta train and you gotta train hard, and you will progress. They’re going to get better year-after-year, and I guarantee some will be recruited by colleges before they have finished high school.” And then? Most of the current alumni are too young for WNBA action, but if a new Paige Bueckers, A’ja Wilson or Caitlin Clark does emerge from Tompkins, it will be in large part because of the grounding received in the JC.  

Oddly, while the League has been noticed—NYC Parks recruited a few of Carter’s players to help unveil Tompkins’ flamboyantly painted basketball court in 2024—it has yet to find a solid sponsor. Funding remains a constant obstacle. Nike sponsored the women’s leagues at The Cage, but only under the umbrella of men. “I thought they’d come with me,” says Carter, “but they didn’t.”

Given outside financial support, she says, “I’d like to add two or three clinics for girls in the summer and have different instructors come and teach different skills and drills, but they would have to be free because a lot of girls don’t have the money, so I need a sponsor. 

“But I do the best that I can. We’ve been at Tompkins for the past seven years and have become part of the Lower East Side community—and even our youngest girls could beat a couple of good high school teams. 

“This is all really for them. This is why I do it.”