Ballenger Fieldhouse is a Sacred Place

It is a testament to his cooking ability that, right alongside ‘basketball,’ the main thing I think of when someone says Steve Schmidt’s name is food.

For more than 30 years, Schmidt has intensely prowled the sidelines in Ballenger Fieldhouse. He’s coached teams to hundreds of wins, won four national championships, and had dozens of players go on to play at four-year colleges and professionally. He’s coached multiple Harlem Globetrotters, which might be my favorite fact about him. I don’t like trying to list out his accolades in stories about Mott because inevitably something always gets left out, he’s won too many things! So it’s easiest to sum up this way: the gym Steve Schmidt coaches in is named ‘Steve Schmidt Gymnasium.’

Obviously, that court is named after him due to basketball success. But what is actually most fitting about walking into Steve Schmidt Gymnasium is the fact that he’s always treated it as a home, where everyone from the community is welcome.

I was fortunate enough to meet Coach Schmidt as a member of the media, when I was a sports writer for the Flint Journal in the mid 2000s. One of the first things a colleague who had covered Mott basketball before me, Jared Field, said was, ‘make sure you go get food in the media room!’ Every game night, you could count on a major spread in there – I still can’t decide what was my favorite, the barbecue chicken sandwiches or the taco and nacho bar, but whatever was available, often cooked by Coach Schmidt, was much appreciated by a starving journalist. I’m pretty sure I paid it forward and passed Jared’s advice about the food spread on to Eric Woodyard when he took over the beat a few years later.

What I soon learned in those days, though, was that the “media room” wasn’t really accurate as it wasn’t reserved just for press. Some nights, it felt like nearly every fan in the bleachers would sneak in and grab a plate, because that’s just how it feels at Mott games – family. Even Draymond Green, then a star at Michigan State, was a fairly regular visitor at Mott games because his high school teammate Bobby Lewis Jr. played for the Bears and Green would make the short drive from East Lansing to watch him. It didn’t take long for someone to grab him and show him where to get some food while he was in town. 

That starts with Coach Schmidt, but it also extends to the people who are loyal to him and the program. He’s created an orbit of genuinely good people who treat everyone who walks into the gym like family. That includes people like Ron Meeker, who always would check in to make sure I got halftime stats during games, or longtime assistant coach Carl Jones, who would always share some friendly words or let me know who’d been looking good in practice and was in line for bigger minutes in a game. Or Kevin Tiggs, who was a star player at Mott, then later an assistant coach who would open the gym up in summers and ran an adult league. 

The gym has always been open to the community, thanks in large part to Coach Schmidt always being generous with his time. He’d open it up for Flint’s lengthy list of professional basketball players when they were home from stints in overseas leagues so they could get work in during the summer. His youth basketball camp he’s run for years – speaking as a parent who has been shocked by how absurdly expensive basketball camps are – is an insane value, and basically anyone who has ever hooped in Flint has memories of playing in it. My son still says it is the best camp he’s ever done and in particular, he swears that Mott’s floor makes him “bouncier.” Doug Anderson probably agrees. Coach Schmidt would always be in the gym helping out during summer CANUSA basketball games. He helped run this year’s first Flintstone Classic for high school kids just a few weeks ago. 

Mott basketball is family, and that gym is home. It’s a pure, safe haven that has always been filled with people from all walks of life in the community. This week, that was violated in perhaps the most horrific way imaginable when someone was shot during an altercation in a bathroom during halftime of a game on January 10. 

I’ve spent days trying to even wrap my head around it. Thankfully, it seems the victim of the shooting survived and the shooter was quickly apprehended. I am grateful that a tragic situation wasn’t worse. But I’m still fuming with anger at the violation of that sacred space.

It actually took me back about 15 years. I was covering a CANUSA game because several Flint Northwestern kids I’d grown close with were playing on a team, just a few days after one of their teammates, Willis Arrington, was shot and killed in a robbery attempt. I remember leaning against the wall under the baseline next to Coach Schmidt, talking through with him how to even process something like that – a talented 17-year-old kid making a terrible decision and paying for it with his life. And beyond coping with what was lost, we were looking out on the court at four kids grieving. They were all wearing shirts with Arrington’s initials and number, trying as teenagers to process something senseless. That situation was raw and emotional, but one significant thing they had was that gym. No matter what was going on in their personal lives or what they were grieving, they could go to Mott and hoop. It was safe. It was home. 

I’m pissed off, because one person made a horrific, reckless choice. One person took advantage of the level of trust that has always been a part of Mott games – it’s one of few places in Flint that you didn’t have to walk through a metal detector to attend an event (even the damn Holiday Walk in the Cultural Center wands people for some insane reason). And now, to people who don’t know better, this stupid act has created an impression that one of the most welcoming places I’ve ever set foot in is somehow not safe. 

I wanted to write this to reiterate that Steve Schmidt Gymnasium is STILL safe. It is STILL home. It STILL represents one of the absolutely most pure things about this city: young people chasing basketball dreams.

My hope is simple: the Mott women’s and men’s teams have games on Wednesday, January 14. The women’s team plays at 5:30, followed by the men. They play Schoolcraft, and both Schoolcraft teams are GOOD, so be prepared to be loud and show what that gym is at its best: an absolute nightmare for opposing teams to play in.

I want the city to show up, show love, and not let an unfair narrative smear an incredible, beautiful, and proud history.