Pressure cooker at Chester remains the same
CHESTER >> Dr. Juan Baughn sits forward in his chair, his erudite cadence acquiring a slight lilt as a smile curls up on the corners of his mouth. In his crisp black suit and orange paisley tie, even the orange crystal on his right ring finger seems to glint a little brighter.
“I think technology has changed,” Baughn was saying from his office in the renovated bowels of Chester High School. “I think America has changed. Even Chester has changed. But Chester basketball, expectations are the same today as when I started in 1970.”
The interim Superintendent of the Chester Upland School District had the occasion to share a conference table with the latest occupant of a Chester throne Baughn knows well — Keith Taylor, hired as the new leader of the Clippers boys basketball program. Many things have changed in Chester since Baughn helmed the Clippers from 1970-74.
But as Taylor assumes one of the most exalted and highest pressure jobs in Pennsylvania basketball, one thing hasn’t changed: What is expected of Chester High’s program.
Predecessor Larry Yarbray seemed to fulfill many of the qualifications that Baughn and athletic director Andre Moore listed for Taylor. A pedigree of Chester basketball. A familiarity with the district and the program’s storied history. A commitment to advancing studentathletes and placing them in college classrooms, not just gyms.
Yarbray did all of those. Taylor — a 1987 grad of Chester, a district employee since 1992 who works in the high school, a college basketball star at Central State University — checks those same boxes.
Yet still Yarbray hit the same wall after about a decade, the invisible restraining line at which the careers of his three most immediate predecessors — Cliff Wilson (11 years), Alonzo Lewis (10) and Fred Pickett (13) — all terminated, for various reasons.
The expectation in Chester is a state championship — not most years, every year. Baughn knew when he sat on the bench, donning crisp suits and coiffed in the Afro that dates the many pictures adorning his office walls. He understood it in recalling recalls that, “one year I lost three games here and you thought I was the worst person in the country.” And he knew that when in 1974, he was contentiously let go by the school after a 23-4 season that landed Chester in the District 1 final and the second round of the state tournament.
The fact this his closest brush to a coveted state title was a one-point setback in the 1972 final to Farrell, the one immortalized on his ring, underscores the tenacity he brought to his job.
“I think that for me, that’s one of the beauties of the city,” Baughn said.
The beauty may remain, but it’s changed forms — as sure as an orange and black Under Armor banner hangs in the Pickett Gymnasium, its professionally printed, plastic sheen in stark contrast to the homespun felt broadcasting Chester’s numerous triumphs. The stakes are different, in the state and nationally. The pathway to college education via basketball has grown increasingly corporatized and cutthroat. For a school like Chester, whose roster is constrained by the bounds of a small, impoverished city, a state title means conquering opponents whose athletic budgets are comparatively limitless and whose catchment area is essentially boundless. To keep pace with teams like Archbishop Wood or Imhotep Charter year after year is an inherently different challenge for Taylor, even if it stems from the same sentiment as Baughn’s directives back in the day.
But none of that matters to the many who view postseason tournaments through Chester’s orange-colored lenses.
Baughn’s statements about Taylor gravitated toward the sense of community, of keeping the ample talent Chester produces in the high school’s system and donning the Orange and Black, even as competing offers flood in from outside the city. Their goals remain aligned with those of predecessors to engage in programs like Upward Bound, of which Taylor was a beneficiary in his playing days, that prepare players for life after high school hoops.
When asked about his challenge and the entry he wants to pen to the storied history of Chester boys basketball, Taylor didn’t couch goals in terms of trophies and banners.
“I don’t want them to look at me,” Taylor said. “I just want them to look at the kids and the progress that they’ve made over the years and how they’ve gone from young men to men, outside of the high school and into college.”
Noble as those aspirations are, it doesn’t necessarily conform to the prevailing winds swirling around the program — of whether five years is too many without a state title, of whether Yarbray’s inability to win a championship in the post-Rondae Hollis-Jefferson era defines his tenure more than the two state crowns they lifted together.
Whether or not the hopes of Chester are too much to pin on any one man or one coaching staff remains to be seen. But not only does Taylor know what he’s getting into, the man who helped hire him can also vouch for any holes in the acceptance.
“I never thought of folks expecting us to win and win and win as unrealistic in terms of expectations,” Baughn said. “Every coach to come after me has had losing seasons. And a losing season here is different than a losing season other places.”
As to what constitutes a winning season, Taylor might have to discover that on the f ly.