Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 2, 1994                   TAG: 9406020062
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MIKE HUDSON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE GOAL IS FUN, AND NOW IT'S GONE

It was part of his routine: If it was a nice day, he'd dribble - ping, ping, ping - to the apartment complex's basketball court and play for an hour or two. He was usually the first player to hit the court each afternoon.

When he got there on this day, he found the gate locked. No problem. The security guards always locked the court up late at night. Sometimes they forgot to unlock it in the morning.

Marcellus went to see Westwood's maintenance man and said, "You know what I want."

"What?"

"Unlock the gate," Marcellus said.

The man replied, "What are you going to shoot on?"

Marcellus went outside and looked up at the basketball goals - there were no baskets. The square backboards stood blankly without their iron hoops.

Marcellus and the other young people at Westwood Village soon found out why: The management had decided to take them down as a way of avoiding altercations on the court, which has often attracted bigger, rougher kids from outside the complex.

Marcellus and other kids at Westwood Village say that's unfair - and it's a solution that leaves them with little to do when they're out of school.

"They're punishing us for what other people are doing," Marcellus said this week. "They expect us to stay out of trouble - why are they taking our goals away?"

Sarah Carlson, an assistant vice president with F&W Management, which manages the government-subsidized complex, said the company is not trying to punish the kids who live in the complex. But "we've got to come up with a better way to control what happens on the basketball court."

She said the management company decided to take the goals down after a security guard tried to lock up the courts one night. The guards had been doing that each night so that the players wouldn't keep people in nearby apartments awake. But on this night, Carlson said, there were dozens of players on the court, and they began to give the guard "a lot of grief" and threaten him. The police had to be called to break up the crowd, she said.

The Police Department recommended that the management remove the goals, Carlson said.

"It's unfortunate that that's the only way that we could have addressed the problem," she said. But given the problems that have happened at the court, she said, what else could F&W have done?

A police spokesman said it's possible that an officer suggested taking down the hoops as a possibility, but that wouldn't be an official Police Department recommendation. "It's up to the complex" to decide what to do in such situations, the spokesman said.

Marcellus Clark said outsiders have caused problems from time to time. Sometimes the bigger kids run the younger ones off the court. His brother, Marcus, 12, has been run over by bigger players who insisted the court belonged to them.

But Marcellus and Marcus say there's a better solution than padlocking the court: Why can't the security guards enforce the rules that are already in place and forbid outsiders from using the complex's basketball court?

Brandon Reynolds, 12, said now there's nothing for kids in the complex to do except watch TV or play video games. He said security guards won't let them gather in hallways or ride their bikes in the grass or on sidewalks, and it's too dangerous to ride on the roads or parking lots. The closest basketball court is about a mile away - too far for younger kids to walk down busy Salem Turnpike.

Marcellus Clark said a complex employee at first told him the court would reopen in two weeks, then said it would reopen next summer, then said the answer was "never.''

However, Carlson said F&W would like to find a way to keep the basketball players supervised so the goals can be put back up. "We'll be happy to work with the parents in controlling the activity," she said.

In the meantime, the court stands empty. Without the hoops, Brandon Reynolds said, "you're shooting at pure air."