When the godfather of Russian basketball, Shabtai von Kalmanovic, contacted Apache Paschall through an intermediary four months back, he had an offer the New York-based coach could not refuse. It was so compelling, it had Paschall, 12 players, two other coaches and three parents scrambling for passports. Their carrot was an all-expenses-paid trip to Russia, to play basketball.
They left Thursday night for Moscow where will play their first game on Friday in the first Spartak Cup for girls' basketball. Exodus, which Paschall coaches, is the U.S. entry in the international competition. The group returns May 5.
"A lot of these kids never leave the projects in Brooklyn," said Paschall, who also coaches at St. Michael Academy, which was ranked No. 5 in the ESPN RISE Fab 50. "Now we're talking about going to Moscow? It was a no-brainer."
The group of players Paschall is taking to Moscow includes Shayra Brown, Bianca Cuevas, Taylor Ford, Krystal Forthan, Bria Hartley, Lubirdia Gordon, Jennifer O'Neill, Allysia Rohlehr, Shayla Russell, Jelleah Sidney, Alexis Smith and Brittany Webb. Among those, Hartley, from North Babylon, N.Y., and O'Neill, who plays for St. Michael, are among the most heavily recruited guards in the country. The 6-foot-4 Webb is No. 41 in the ESPN HoopGurlz Super Sixty for 2010, and Forthan, from Portland, Ore., is one of the top players in the 2011 class.
Two of the players are youngsters -- Cuevas is a wunderkind seventh grader and Gordon, 6-3, is an eighth grader who played varsity at Mt. Vernon (N.Y.) High School. Lauren Best and Ron Kelly, assistants at St. Michael who coach their own Exodus teams, also accompanied the group, as did three parents.
Paschall said he considered trying to include players from other teams and regions, but decided trying to get other teams and coaches to cooperate would be too difficult in the contentious and competitive club-team environment. "People go crazy," he said. So he stuck with his own program, adding the benefit of familiarity and cohesion.
Von Kalmanovic is the owner of the Spartak women's basketball club, based in Moscow, that has employed such WNBA stars as Sue Bird, Lauren Jackson and Diana Taurasi and has won the EuroLeague title three straight years, a first.
Exodus will be the U.S. entry to the Spartak Cup on an annual basis, Paschall said.
"I've always tried to take the girls to other regions of the country as part of their personal development," he said. "Just the experience of going to another country will broaden the horizons of the girls. It will allow them to see different things, open their minds to different people and cultures."
