The Courts

In a tumultuous summer on Martha’s Vineyard, there’s love, basketball, and Eric Collins who just wants to score   It's The Summer of 1974. The Jackson 5 are a Dancing Machine. Stevie Wonder is Living For The City. President Nixon is leaving office amid an explosive scandal, and "JJ Evans" is Dy-no-mite. The country was a mix of reaching for the stars and moral damnation. And on the island many African Americans know as their Black haven,  a movie crew on the beach is filming a shark tale titled Jaws.  But for Eric Collins, who is madly  in love with basketball and pretty girls, both of which are a little out of reach—life is just getting started.     On Martha's Vineyard, Eric and his fellow teens escape the headlines of the violence unleashed upon iconic civil rights heroes, and on tormented students caught up in Boston's forced school busing, by hooping, or cheering with their summer friends from in Oak Bluffs. The center of their universe for these teens is "The Courts,", where an all day, all night summer basketball league serves as diversion from the realities no Hollywood magic can dismiss. The Oak Bluffs Courts in Niantic Park, steps away from the island’s most stylish downtown district, were a welcome retreat from the confines of their cities or boredom of their suburbs. Basketball set the stage for a culture so cool and so cherished. Showtime was any time where passers by had the pleasure of entertainment, a gossip mill, dating service and fashion show. Where else in 1970's America were the white kids the working class, and the Black kids the upscale suburbanites? Where else do little white boys have both teenaged Black role models and - the summer league stars six and seven years their senior, who coach their games in the morning, and teach them basketball drills. Like teenaged basketball players Johnny Rogers and Ronnie Brown- Johnny and Ronnie are heroes to Vineyard and vacation boys, hearthrobs to the girls. The Courts: where players from across socioeconomic lines hone their games. Vineyard players pride themselves on beating city kids from Roxbury, Harlem, Brooklyn, Queens, and Philly, while admiring young ladies look on. When the buzzer sounds, it's party time. But not so much for Krista Reese, a first- time visitor from Ohio, an outsider confined to her family vacation cottage porch by a spinal condition that constricts her movement. Krista would love to join her sister Andrea, who's two years older, and her brother Ken, who's two years younger, at the beach or on their bikes. Not so much for Eric, who spends the summer of ’74 working up the nerve to get in on all the fun, struggling to keep focused as he steps up (and gets shot down) from one girl to the next, and like Krista, though neither of them realize it, struggles to belong.