The second annual SNY Invitational will take place Jan. 23-24 at NYU’s Coles Center and will once again feature some of the top high school boys basketball teams in the New York metropolitan area.
Thomas Jefferson, led by Keith Spellman, Joel Wright, David Coley and Davontay Grace (pictured courtesy Daily News), meets Sherrod Wright and Mount Vernon in one semifinal on Jan. 23 at 6 o’clock. The second semifinal features a Boys & Girls team led by Lamount Samuell, Anton Dickerson and Mike Taylor against a St. Raymond’s squad that includes Nkereuwem Okoro, Myron Hickman and Daniel Dingle.
The winners will square off for the championship on Jan. 24.
Speaking of Boys & Girls, Ruth “Coach Love” Lovelace, the head coach of the Brooklyn team, will be featured in a two-hour documentary to be shown on ESPN on Dec. 21 called A Woman Among Boys.
A Woman Among Boys, directed and produced by award-winning filmmakers Jon Alpert and Matthew O’Neill, is an inside look at a season led by the only woman coaching a boys’ team in New York City’s toughest basketball division and in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The once highly accomplished and storied program had fallen on hard times before Lovelace, who attended the high school and was teaching Phys Ed at the time, was named coach in 1994 at the age of 24. She’s faced unique challenges and has seen players on her teams work to overcome significant obstacles both on and off the court, and in the process has rebuilt Boys High into a powerhouse – with playoff appearances in every year of her tenure.