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Sports

At Rich Central, Bryan's Song is Hit Tune

Olympians girls basketball coach Bryan Craig used sports to stay out of trouble growing up on Chicago's South Side. Now, he's using his upbringing to help students and his players at Rich Central.

It was a typical Friday night, or so it appeared. Bryan Craig was at school at Lewis University in Romeoville. Craig, who grew up on the Chicago’s South Side, had plans that evening to go home and hang out with friends, who usually would sit on the porch while drinking, smoking and shooting dice.

However, before heading home, Craig had the urge to stick around Lewis. That night, the university had intramural basketball games, and Craig was a sports-junkie.

“At the last minute, I was like, ‘Man, I kind of feel like hoopin’,’ ” Craig said.

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After the game, Craig still had the urge to go home, so he called ahead to his buddy Antoine, who had some disturbing news about one of their friends.

“Eric got shot on the porch,” Antoine told Craig. Eric died in the gang-related shooting in the same place Craig could have been on had he gone home.

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“That’s definitely a clear case when I could have been involved in something that could have gotten me killed,” Craig said.

That night was just another example of how sports have saved Craig’s life.

Growing up on the South Side

Craig grew up as a street basketball player. While he was competitive and loved the game, he had other motives for playing.

“Where I grew up, if you’re walking down the street and a group of guys are in a car, they’re going to stop and mess with you,” said Craig, who grew up without his father for most of the time. “If I had a basketball, just dribbling, then they’d assume I’m an athlete, and they wouldn’t bother me."

So, Craig had a basketball with him wherever he went, playing basketball at the park or in the alley. He wasn’t tall (he wasn’t 5 feet until his senior year of high school), but he could handle and pass the ball like his childhood idol, Tim Hardaway.

Craig, who also played baseball growing up, played basketball every day at Washington Park. It was his way of staying out of gangs. “Around that time it was the only way,” Craig said.

Craig’s mom, Peggy Craig, acknowledged this too. “He was so into sports, it kept him from being on the block doing things he wasn’t supposed to do,” Peggy said.

He became so good that his friends have called him “legendary” as a street basketball player. “My thing was always about embarrassing somebody off the dribble,” said Craig, who played with Farragut Academy legend Ronnie Fields at times.

He talked trash, but he knew when to and when not to. You see, Craig had a high IQ on the court, even when it came to trash talking. “It was always psychological,” Craig said.

Craig also knew when to, and when not to fight back when he was hassled, whether on the court or off it. “If someone pushed him into a corner, he would retaliate,” Peggy said. “Then, they wouldn’t bother him anymore.”

At the time, Craig played mind games on his opponents. Little did he know that this psychology would turn into a career.

Escaping to Lewis University

Craig spent a year and a half at St. Francis De Sales and the rest of his high school career at Simeon, playing one year of basketball at Simeon before being cut because he couldn’t dunk. He said gang life was prevalent at Simeon. “If you were a nerd, you got beat up every day, if you didn’t play ball, you got beat up every day,” Craig said.

After graduating high school in 1996, Craig needed to get away from it all. “When I went away to college, the guys I hung out with, they were either going to jail for selling drugs, or a couple guys got shot, one got killed even,” Craig said.

Craig began to thrive at Lewis. He played baseball, started a rapping career, and majored in Radio/TV. He even stuck around to earn two masters degrees, one in counseling psychology and one in education administration.

“Throughout my life, people liked talking to me, people would vent to me a lot,” said Craig, who added that his excitement for psychology started back on the courts of Washington Park.

He had found his passion: using the experiences he had growing up to help others as a psychologist or counselor. Now, he needed the right fit, and he wanted to work in the school system.

A friend of his found him the opening as a guidance counselor at Rich Central, and despite some initial reservations that he wouldn’t find an urban environment at Central, he took the job in 2004.

Becoming a coach

Go back with me to Craig’s time at college.

Craig’s sweat falls on the courts of Washington Park, which was still within driving distance of Lewis. No, Craig isn’t embarrassing his peers this time, but going toe-to-toe with his little sister, Lauren, in a game of one-on-one.

“He wouldn’t let me quit,” said Lauren, who was in seventh grade at the time. Craig had a rule about the workout: Lauren had to beat him before they would be done. That was rough for Lauren because she was tired, hungry and over-matched. However, it had a purpose, as Lauren had recently called him up and asked if he would be her basketball coach.

The coaching inspired Craig, and he got a job as the freshman girls basketball coach at Rich Central in 2004. He worked his way up to become the varsity coach by the start of the 2008-2009 season.

Coaching at Rich Central

It was time for tryouts for the 2010-2011 season, and Craig had his girls working hard. They ran 20 suicides, 10 down-and-backs and did 150 pushups, and they weren’t even in Rich Central’s main gym, but the back one. Craig, however, had a purpose behind the hard work. “(Coach Craig) was like, ‘If you get through this, you can make it through anything,’ ” Rich Central senior center Kristina Collie said. “And I swear, from then on, practice has just been easy."

This coaching philosophy stems back to Craig's time on the courts at Washington Park.

For him, growing up as a street basketball player using athletics to stay out of gangs, he was always ultra-competitive and hard-working. This saved him from getting into deep trouble with gang-members who might have forced him into joining.

“Whatever I did, I did it with passion,” Craig said. “So, I think a lot of guys really thought that I was going to go to the NBA or the major leagues at some point because I was so serious about it.” 

He has applied these principles of discipline to his teams at Rich Central.

“I always tell the girls, ‘Ah! Beast!’ And that’s with everything you do,” Craig said. “If I’m writing a research paper on physics, ‘I’m going to beast this paper. I’m going to write the best paper ever possible.’”

Craig is in his third year as the Olympians' varsity coach and has compiled a record of 54-22. He teams have won two conference championships and reached the sectionals last season.

His players appreciate how he helps them grow as basketball players and young women. “He’s like the daddy of the team. He can talk to us in a parental type of way,” Rich Central junior guard Tyron Eubanks-Thornton said.

Collie said Craig has pushed her to pursue a college degree. “He really cares about my future. I always joke around and say things like, ‘I’m just going to be a trophy wife, it’s OK,’ ” Collie said. But Craig won’t hear jokes like that, and Collie is heading to Oakwood University in Hunstsville, Ala., and is thinking about trying out for the team next year.

What could have been

What does Craig think could have been if he hadn’t been involved in sports growing up?

“Quite honestly, as sad as it sounds, I’d be in jail, or dead, or something like that, I really do think that,” Craig said. “Because there was no way to escape, I knew I would have to join a gang if someone made me. I would just have to.”

Instead, Craig, 32, has a wife, Takisha, and a daughter, Nina, and a son due to be born on April 1. He has a fulfilling job where he is able to help high schoolers deal with the many issues that face our youth today. And he coaches players whom he can make a deep connection with.

“They really know I care about them, and I really do,” Craig said. “I’ll probably walk many of my players up the aisle when they get married. It’s that close of a bond. I love them to death.”

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