Sports Brooklyn Boro

There’s a basketball power brewing in Clinton Hill

April 15, 2024 Andy Furman

Basketball. Image via Pexels

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Be careful – please.

It may be spreading – and it could very well be in the water.

The good news, thus far, is that it seems to be in the Clinton Hill neighborhood of the borough.

But really – it is a good thing,

Its young basketball talent being produced and developed at P.S., 11, Purvis J. Behan Elementary School, 419 Waverly Ave.

The teacher – Mike Senior. And, he knows talent.

“Carter Sawyer is a special student-athlete,” Senior told the Eagle. “Graduated from P.S. 11 last year with honors. He’s a ‘gym-rat’ and a ‘work-a-holic.’”

According to Senior, the young Sawyer worked out the entire summer a year-ago at Pratt Institute (Emerson Park). “He was one of the top players at Nike Basketball Camps (St. Joseph’s University),” Senior said.

The 76-year-old Senior coached basketball at Tilden and Benjamin Banneker Academy. Presently, he directs the Selvyn Smith Memorial Sports and Educational Program, with alumni, he says of about 14,000.

He met Sawyer at P.S. 11, where he trains young basketball stars-to-be, every Monday and Wednesday mornings, from, 7-8:15 am.

“The coach gave me a list of kids,” Senior said. “As for Carter, well he just joined in; and he outworked everyone else.”

Carter’s mom – Jessica Cumberbatch – said, “He (Carter) wanted to get up early, and he wanted to be there for the workouts.”

Mom said she saw a growth spurt in young Carter during the summer from fifth-to-sixth grade. “That’s when he developed a real interest in basketball,” she said.

Cumberbatch admits she doesn’t really know where the basketball-bug came from, but was “pleasantly surprised.”

Sawyer shot-up from about four-foot-eight to five-foot-one that summer, she said, and he started watching basketball videos on You-Tube.

“Mostly skills and drill videos,” she said.

“He’s a very good listener and takes well to instruction,” Cumberbatch said of her son. “He is very structured, and he will teach those with no basketball background skills as well.

“I didn’t know he was as good as he is,” she said.

Sawyer credits (Mike) Senior for his growth in the sport. “He taught me not only basketball fundamentals; but how to act like a young man,” he said. “As for basketball he worked with me on agility drills, shooting, form, and how to play good defense.”

All this while Carter Sawyer suffers from asthma.

“It (Asthma) doesn’t affect me too much,” he said, “I’m dealing with it much better now.”

What he is dealing with now is his first year at Leman Manhattan Preparatory School – a private school; located in the Financial District of lower Manhattan.

The school serves students from early childhood (age 24 months) through 12th grade.

Founded as the Claremont Preparatory School in 2005, it was a renamed to emphasize its sister-school status to College du Leman in Switzerland. In 2010, Leman joined Meritas, an international network of college preparatory schools; in 2015, it became an affiliate school of Nord Anglia Education as part of an acquisition deal.

Leman Manhattan Preparatory School enrolls students representing more than 70 countries of origin. As of 2019, tuition for K-12-day students averages $50,850 per-year, while the boarding tuition is $91,000 per-year.

As for first-year Carter Sawyer his daily routine looks something like this – 6:30 am wake-up call; leave his Sheepshead Bay home between 7 and 7:25; then a 40-55-miniute subway ride to lower Manhattan to school — sometimes by car, he says —school starts at 8:35; ends 2:25 or 3:15 depending on the day and stay after school till around 5.

“There’s no sixth-grade basketball team at Leman,” says Mike Senior “But he has been playing with the seventh and eighth graders.

“He’s got attitude, game and work ethic at a top level,” Senior said.

“He’s prepared.”

So was another youngster – Mark Collins.

Perhaps that’s because both attended that mini basketball powerhouse, P.S. 11.

Andy Furman is a Fox Sports Radio national talk show host. Previously, he was a scholastic sports columnist for the Brooklyn Eagle. Her may be reached at: [email protected] Twitter: @AndyFuyrmanFSR.