Just a couple things on the basketball side that I should post, while Coach Dixon is watching Sam Young counsel and plenty of recruits play at the LeBron James Skills Academy in Akron.
Akron coach Keith Dambrot continued his vigil over 7-0 recruit Zeke Marshall, who has verbally committed to the Zips. He also had some help during the first game of the day as a few Akron players visited with Marshall’s family in the stands. A few sat with Dambrot at one end of the court while another cluster of Akron players sat above the basket at the opposite end of the court.
The story on now Director of Basketball Operations Brian Regan is interesting to me, not because of his dad being a former Pittsburgh city councilman. No, its how difficult to get and prized jobs are on coaching staffs at major conference programs — especially successful ones. Yes, I’m sure his local ties played some role in wanting to work in the area as well.
Here’s a guy who has been working through the lower-tier coaching ranks of Colgate and D-II progams. Being a top assistant, but to get to a major program at age 41 took the video coordinator job. A position in a coaching hierarchy just above paid graduate assistant. Usually filled by yonger men who make it past graduate assistant/gopher. Young up-and-comers and ex-players being groomed.
Why? Because beyond the improved job opportunities of having a staff affiliation on a major program on the resume is the money. Even getting the third assistant chair in the BCS conferences likely means a six digit salary (pdf).
Then there was an excellent human interest story involving two Ethiopian boys adopted in different parts of the US and coming to the Jamie Dixon Basketball camp as a way for to see each other as well as have fun.
But this week, Mahari and Yosef, now both 7, played together once again, trading the streets of Addis Ababa for the pristine courts of the University of Pittsburgh’s Petersen Events Center, at coach Jamie Dixon’s basketball camp.
Mahari was adopted a month after Yosef by Kim Jackson, of Leesburg, Va. The adoptive parents kept in touch — along with the new parents of a third friend, Gediyon, who now lives in New Hampshire — and decided to meet up once a year to keep the promise.
Ms. Jackson, a Butler native, went to graduate school at Pitt and sent out a Christmas card with her kids clad in Pitt T-shirts. It turned out to be something else they had in common with the Devanys, who live in Houston — Billy is Mr. Dixon’s cousin.
After discovering the Pitt connection, they decided to sign up both the boys for a week at the camp, the second time they have gotten together in America. Mr. Dixon, who hosted the Devanys at his home this week, even arranged to get Yosef and Mahari on the same team.
