ALBANY — Gerald Malcolm arrived at the park on Madison Avenue about an hour before game time Thursday, pulling a box of jerseys and a speaker from his trunk. Then the work began.
He walked over to a group of teenagers hanging out in the park and smoking, asking them to stop or leave. It’s one of the conversations he has almost daily to prepare the park to host the GKNY Mentor League.
The league is Malcolm’s effort at replicating the impact a short-lived 90’s basketball program, the Midnight Basketball League, had on him and other young men in the city.
Malcolm played for Local 190, a team of Albany players that won the Midnight Basketball League state title in 1994, the only year the statewide tournament was held. That experience stayed with him and other members of the team for decades, Malcolm said.
He went on to become an educator and a writer. Today, he works as a consultant for the Schenectady City School District on issues like bullying.
In 2018, he looked around the city and saw there were no options for young men over the age of 18 to play free, organized basketball.
“In order to make the change you have to go and set the example of what you want to see,” he said.
The league offers more than giving young men an outlet and safe place to play. The program’s goal is to connect them with resources, introducing them to mentors or community organizations looking to provide opportunities to young men, Malcolm said.
He started the program with a men’s league, aimed at those 18-30 years of age. The games were played in Troy as well as at the Arbor Hill Community Center. The program has since expanded to offer organized games during the summer to elementary, middle school and high school-aged teams at the small, corner-lot Madison Park in the Pine Hills neighborhood. In doing so, they’ve been asked to help turn around a park that has struggled with gun violence and quality of life issues in recent years.
The league has become a welcome presence at the park, said John Clarkson, president of the neighborhood association.
“Having that program there is extremely valuable to our community,” he said.
But Malcolm’s efforts at expanding his vision are stymied by struggles to get enough funding to stay afloat.
Midnight basketball leagues were invented in response to a rise in crime in the late 1980’s and early 90’s. G. Van Standifer, a town manager in Maryland, founded the first league in 1986. He decided to hold games late at night after pouring through police reports and noticing most crimes in the summer months happened between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., according to a 1989 New York Times article that drew widespread attention to his efforts.
Soon there were leagues across the country and the idea drew the support of presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. But the leagues became a political pawn during discussions around the 1994 crime bill and federal funding to support them was struck from the deal. Soon after that, leagues began to wither away.
Malcolm fears that without funding his league faces a similar fate, as support from the city and others hasn’t materialized to the level he expected.
Malcolm’s real work starts with the men in the adult league, trying to determine their education level or job experience. The program currently has 80 18-to 30-year-olds in the adult league. The idea is to figure out where they’ve been and where they want to go, he said. The men attend monthly workshops and Malcolm is working on organizing a job fair as well as a tutor to teach the men how to take state civil service exams.
“Basketball is just a way to get them here because they love it,” he said. “I have their attention to get them these things they need but might not want.”
He went through much of the same with the Midnight Basketball League. Players had to attend workshops during the week to play. Several of his teammates ended up with jobs with league sponsors or went on work with the city school district. He tries to apply the same lessons to those men.
Many of them can be pulled in with the simple act of putting on a jersey, an idea that Malcolm believes can be transformative.
“A lot of these guys were never on a team. They never got to wear a jersey,” he said. “For me,” in his own time in the Midnight Basketball League “it was a chance to be on a team, to be coached. It gave me an opportunity to get some knowledge from some grown men that if it wasn’t for basketball, I never would have known.”
The GKNY Mentor League plays Monday through Thursday at Madison Park, with the men’s league also meeting on Sunday afternoons at Arbor Hill Community Center. The teams draw opponents from around the area, including Colonie, South Glens Falls and Bennington, Vt. No team is asked to pay an entry fee.
As part of an agreement with the city police department, Malcolm and his volunteers largely police the park on their own during league play, although the city had a dedicated police patrol for the program.
He picked Madison Park as the outdoor court for a reason. Located in the middle of the city, it draws people from nearly all of its neighborhoods.
“It’s not uptown, it’s not downtown, it’s neutral,” he said.
His influence was on display during a recent incident in the park involving two teenagers and city police. As officers tried to place the two into custody, a local activist filmed the police actions while cursing and yelling at them. As the teens were taken away, a line of police officers stood on the sidewalk. Malcolm could see teens drifting over from the court to see what was going on.
Malcolm was blunt. “I told the cops, ‘You gotta leave’,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later, the park was back to its rhythm without the heavy police presence.
“Had we not been there it would’ve gone south, real quick,” he said.
The six-week program moved to Madison Park last July. No one got paid for their work, with the understanding that the following year there would be a dedicated funding stream to pay referees and support the program’s larger goals.
But then came the expansion.
Two months ago, the city police department and a local business approached Malcolm to ask if he could set up a spring session in the park in addition to the session he planned for July. A second meeting was held with leaders from the neighborhood as well as the University at Albany and the College of Saint Rose. According to Malcolm, he left the meeting with the understanding the spring session was going to be fully funded at a cost of $25,000.
Five weeks in and that money hasn’t materialized. On one level, Malcolm is glad the neighborhood asked him to start early. He believes getting a foothold earlier in the summer heads off potential problems later in the summer. But it puts a strain on him.
“This is something they wanted,” Malcolm said. “I didn’t ask for this; my program runs in July. So now, five weeks later, I’m here. And when I’m here I have to go on the relationships that I’ve built to where this (park) won’t get chaotic. It’s just disheartening.”
In the meantime, County Legislator Wanda Willingham is working with Malcolm to find support at the county level.
Willingham expressed frustration that the city and other institutions hadn’t yet stepped up to support the league.
“This man has been doing this out of his own pocket,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned this is cheap for what it actually provides for us.”
While the lack of funding and institutional support in the past bothers Malcolm, he knows that if he continues on long enough, the pieces will come together, he said.
But the funding pathway isn’t as clear as the city writing a $25,000 check. Under its rules, the city can’t give more than $5,000 without seeking other quotes for programming at the park or issuing a bid.
On Friday, Mayor Kathy Sheehan’s chief of staff, David Galin, said there is a meeting scheduled with Malcolm and several city departments to discuss potential funding.
Galin added that the city had already made an investment in the program, including assigning two Department of Recreation staffers to the park when the league was in session as well as providing jerseys and a PA system. The city police department also details officers to the park when the league plays. He estimated the city’s in-kind contributions totaled approximately $20,000.
“APD is also considering additional opportunities to enhance their presence in Madison Park above and beyond the aforementioned investment of resources,” Galin said in a statement.
That means the league will be dependent on other partners stepping up to fill the gap.
Police Chief Eric Hawkins said the department views the program as a success. And he agrees with Malcolm’s approach of not having the police handle every dispute that arises.
“We wanted to send a message that the community was reclaiming the park with some positive activities,” he said. “We’ve gotten some inquiries from other people in other parts of the city on how we could potentially have similar programming in some of our other hotspots in the city. And I think this can certainly serve as a model for that.”
Ninety minutes before Thursday’s games the only presence in the park was a group of young people, mostly teen girls. A fight broke out with a girl having her sweater pulled over her head as another girl swung a fist at her face. Later, a young man on a dirt bike zoomed across the courts.
But after Malcolm and his volunteers arrived, the scenery changed.
As Malcolm spoke with a reporter, two teenage boys came up to him and asked the same question. “Are you having a tournament today?”
Then he had a short chat with another teenager who had played in the league the day before. Malcolm had enlisted the boy in helping to keep other teens who spend time in the park from causing problems. In exchange, he’d occasionally slip the boy money from his own pocket.
Meanwhile a volunteer with the league picked up trash, sweeping debris and leaves from the playing surface.
Twenty minutes before the games began, a boy in baggy pants carrying a backpack ran flying across the courts toward the group of teens that were smoking. Malcolm beckoned him over before he reached his destination.
“My man, remember you’re a leader,” he told the boy.
“I wasn’t going to smoke!” the boy told him.
“I didn’t say you were, I just wanted to remind you to be a leader,” Malcolm told him.
The boy nodded, turned, and joined a shoot-around on the court.
Malcolm said the daily effort of making the park a safe place was wearing on him.
“It takes 40 percent out of me, driving (here) knowing I have to do this by myself,” he said.
But by tip-off the dirt biker was gone. The group of teenagers hanging out had shrunk to a single bench on the side of the park. Small children crawled over the playground equipment and swings.
The courts hosted two games that night, with the third court open for pick-up games. Parents and grandparents set up lawn chairs, enjoying the warm spring evening and urging the athletes on.
On the middle court, two fourth and fifth grade teams faced off, a wild scramble of awkward jump shots and clumsy chest passes.
On the other court there was a contest between two teams of seventh and eighth grade boys, their play more refined but no less frantic on the shorter-than-regulation courts.
Eddy Johnson, who organizes the referees for the league, said the games provide a rare opportunity for free, organized basketball for all ages. The games allow more contact than a typical high school game, but the players are expected to keep it clean.
“You get a different bunch of kids. You get kids from suburban areas or urban areas, come out to participate in something pretty fun,” he said.
Watching the action from a bench was Lloyd Stewart, the former head of the Capital Area Urban League, who helped start the city’s Midnight Basketball League. Stewart recalled how in its initial incarnation the league was set up in partnership with then-mayor Jerry Jennings. Local grocery stores and banks chipped in to sponsor the teams.
The state only hosted a statewide tourney that one year, he recalled. And the league only survived a few more years after that. But the 1994 Albany team’s championship trophy, engraved with the words “The Cuomo Cup,” for then- Gov. Mario Cuomo, still sits on a shelf in his home.