The Bishop O’Dowd boys basketball team hasn’t been in the gym since March 10. The players miss the feeling of competing against their rivals.
With the general election nearing and civil unrest sparked by George Floyd’s killing raging on, O’Dowd’s head coach, Lou Richie, found a way to blend his team’s competitive nature with an obligation he felt to turn the social justice movement he’d witnessed into tangible change.
“We can’t play,” Richie said. “But we can compete against each other to see who can register more kids to vote.”
And so Richie started a voter registration challenge. It is a campaign to challenge coaches — from Golden State Warriors’ Steve Kerr to a local rival, Moreau Catholic’s Frank Knight — to get students and people to register and pre-register to vote.
“When O’Dowd challenged us, the competitive nature kicked in,” Knight said. “I’m hoping the action turns to civic after the competitiveness turns down.”
Richie came up with the idea after meeting with Oakland civil rights attorney John Burriss. The East Bay native was troubled by the killing of Floyd by police in Minneapolis but encouraged by the protest that erupted throughout the country. Richie didn’t want to see the uprising fizzle without tangible change, so he consulted Burriss.
“What’s something that can make longstanding change?” Richie asked.
“You have to register people to vote,” Burriss said.
Richie reached out to Howard University basketball coach Kenny Blakeney, who pointed him to When We All Vote, a voting rights organization started by former first lady Michelle Obama. An attached program called My School Votes provided ways for students to review their local propositions and candidates they could vote for. The streamlined ways in which students could get civically engaged prompted more questions to their coaches and teachers.
But the competition snowballed. Knight, who doubles as an American government teacher at Moreau, already had 85 students registered to vote as part of their homework assignments. The rival school had a significant, early lead. Students went mad trying to register friends and turn in proof.
“We have a rivalry with Bishop O’Dowd,” Knight said. “He tags me on Instagram and challenges me on the internet and it caught me off guard. He’s serious.”
For Richie, the competition got bigger than the rivalry. Soon more Bay Area high school coaches were getting their students involved. Mitty’s Tim Kennedy and Sue Phillips, St. Mary’s-Berkeley’s Rich Buckner and De La Salle-Concord ‘s Justin Argenal stepped in, too.
“We don’t know who won,” Richie said. “It wasn’t even about us competing anymore. Who can get more schools? If I can get 50 kids in my school, that’s great. But if I can get 50 schools to get five people, that’s 250 people.”
Students live on social media. Richie knows. So he had his students start Instagram challenges for schools across the country. They challenged Kerr and Atlanta Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce, a San Jose native who played at Yerba Buena High School and Santa Clara University.
“Coaches think alike,” Richie said. “If you can get a chance for a teachable moment, this is probably the best teachable moment of our lives that we will have as a coach.”
Richie was sending out emails and making phone calls to some other bigger fish, but none would bite. Not until Nike got involved at the 11th hour to help organize a Zoom call with 200 coaches.
Richie and Knight hope to keep the local momentum moving until election day. With a number of polling places — including at O’Dowd — closed this election day because of COVID, the coaches are hoping to encourage voters to new polling sites such as the Oakland Coliseum complex, Chase Center and Elmhurst United Middle School in Oakland.
They are still hoping to reach and work with the A’s and Warriors organizations to deliver food and water to those who may be waiting in line at polling places on election day. Ideally, they’d like to have local radio station KMEL set up a tent to keep voters entertained, or at least have some music.
“Anything to make people feel like there’s no voter suppression,” Richie said.
His players — and others from Bay Area high schools participating in the challenge — want to contribute.
Knight and Richie plan to drive their players to various locations on election day to help them deliver resources.
“Maybe they will get to see the different communities and it might shock them,” Knight said.
Richie’s idea has blossomed into a movement that he wants to make sure he can close out.
“We’re basketball coaches and we’re taught to prepare for the fourth quarter,” he said. “So this is definitely the fourth quarter.”
