Wildcats Basketball Team Sprinting Into Special Olympics USA Games
By Randy Robertson, NYC and Hudson Valley Regional Storyteller
The free throw clanked off the front of the rim, and all the Wildcats knew what to do: head to the baseline and run a sprint up and down the court. On a recent Saturday morning in Harlem, the Manhattan Wildcats were preparing for their trip to the Special Olympics USA Games in Minnesota beginning June 20.
While much of the neighborhood was still waking up, the outside calm belied a marvelous gathering of loud and energetic athletes. The Wildcats were off and running early this morning, with a heavy emphasis on running!
“The coaches keep us in shape with lots of running,” Wildcats athlete Michael Ayers said. “But it’s ok, we’re used to it. You should see us at soccer practice we do even more running there!”
Ayers wore a sweat-soaked Brooklyn Nets shirt and a wide smile. Despite the challenge of all the early morning sprints, Ayers, 26, was an eager participant. And while many of these emerging basketball stars were playing other sports such as soccer just a few months ago, the focus was clearly on basketball on this day.
Coaches David Sehl, Katelyn Maroney and William Colon know that they can’t coax any more height out of their mid-sized team in the next few weeks. These young adults are as tall as they’re going to get! But, with a little extra practice and determination, they might be able to squeeze just enough conditioning into the team to make a difference in a close game or two in the Traditional division at the USA Games.
“We need to work on our free throws, and at the same time we want them to be in the best shape possible,” Coach Maroney said. “We have to make our free throws. And we can’t be tired out there, especially at the end of games. So that’s why we started this practice with free throws and running sprints.”
After the usual sprints to start practice, the Wildcats took turns shooting one free throw and the requirement was simple: make the free throw and sprints are done, miss and everyone runs again. This went on for nearly five minutes, and all the players were actively running and pushing themselves. That impressed Coach Maroney.
“David and I put a lot into the culture and what we expect from the players,” said Maroney, a Brigham Young University graduate who helped start Manhattan’s first Special Olympics community soccer team a few years ago.
That culture includes running of course, and it also is about competing and giving your best effort every time. Coach Sehl provided a great example at practice on Saturday. With several players unavailable to practice, Sehl joined in so they could scrimmage five-on-five. Within the first two minutes, he landed on an athlete’s shoe and turned his ankle. Though visibly pained for a few minutes, Sehl shook it off and returned to continue practicing for another full hour.
“I played today just literally out of necessity,” Sehl said. “We only had 9 guys out there, so I had to jump in. Usually I’ll just let them go, but sometimes if I feel like they need to push, me or one of the other coaches will jump in and just try to get things moving a little bit. I feel like it can be a good motivator sometimes to get the competitive juices flowing.”
Coach Sehl, 33, has been hooping and coaching with the Wildcats for more than two decades already, having started with the Special Olympics as part of a seventh-grade school project. From those early teenage days, he always found the Special Olympics and this Manhattan Wildcats team to be one of his favorite activities.
“I grew up in NYU faculty housing, because my mom taught graduate school,” Sehl recalled. “The Wildcats used to practice at the NYU gym back in the day, the old Cole Sports Center. So my dad was like, oh, I heard there’s a Special Olympics practice, basketball practice, let’s go check it out. So I went, I spoke to a few of the coaches there and they were like, oh, you should stay for practice. I stayed, loved it and wrote my paper. I started as a volunteer, then started coaching. We did OK, and there also were some rough years and we had a tough time winning games. Luckily, Katelyn came out from Utah, and she’s been like a Godsend. So I help her with soccer, she helps with basketball, and we just make it work.”
While Maroney joined more recently, Coach Colon has been a presence almost throughout Sehl’s tenure here. Colon, a 6-foot-8 center, anchored the Wildcats defense for many years as an athlete before shifting over to coaching recently. He noted what a major impact the Special Olympics and Coach Sehl have had on his life.
“David has always been a mentor to me,” Coach Colon said. “I’ve been playing with him since I was young, back in 2004.”
Though Colon’s playing days are over, he’s joyful to stay involved, always encouraging the younger Wildcats and teaching them the importance of defense. The Wildcats play a 2-3 zone about 90% of the time the coaches estimated, and it has been very successful for them over the years.
It was at the 2024 State Games in Ithaca, NY that the Manhattan Wildcats took a giant leap forward. The Wildcats won the State Games that year and qualified for this year’s USA Games. They’ve used the past year and a half to train hard, add a few specific offensive and inbound plays and to really come together as a team, not a collection of individual players. That’s a key part of the culture that Coach Maroney mentioned.
“These guys are my family and my friends,” Ayers said. “We share the ball, we pass the ball and we play as a team.”
A connection in recent years to the strong Unified and Traditional sports programs at P721M in Manhattan helped fuel the Wildcats rise. The P721M City Hawks will be sending a Traditional soccer team to the USA Games in June. In addition, talented basketball players such as Ayers, Kenny Kinsey and twins Christian Lopez and Christopher Lopez shifted from the P721M program to the Wildcats community team after aging out of the school program.
“They are such a big asset to the team,” Coach Maroney said of the Lopez twins. “They play pickup basketball every day in the park too. In our games they’re really good at communicating and pushing their teammates.”
Coach Maroney noted that Christian Lopez scored nearly 30 points in a recent game at the Fieldston Games in the Bronx. That kind of on-court leadership and skill level will be a key factor in the team’s success at the USA Games.
The Wildcats are eager for the opportunity to shine on a bigger stage. After taking first place at the State Games for the past two years, the Wildcats are ready for the big challenge coming their way in Minnesota.
“We’re going for the gold,” Ayers said. “We want to win it.”
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