The Hopkins boys' basketball team was walking into Target Center early Saturday afternoon, Coach Ken Novak Jr. pointed down a corridor and said, "Take the first left to get to the locker room."
Elston Phillips nodded and said, "I got it. I was here with the girls last year."
Phillips, now a junior, was cut from the sophomore team during tryouts in November 2005.
"I was depressed," Phillips said. "I started acting like a jerk to everyone."
Brian Cosgriff, the coach of the Hopkins girls' team and Phillips' former phys-ed teacher, came to the rescue. He invited Phillips to serve as manager and also as practice fodder for the girls' team.
"It was an interesting experience," Phillips said. "The girls really cared about each other as teammates. And we wound up winning the state [Class 4A] championship."
Phillips wears the letter he earned as a team manager on his Hopkins jacket. And now, on a Saturday when the Target Center court was home to numerous Division I recruits in the Timberwolves Shootout, Phillips could feel a sense of accomplishment in wearing uniform No. 3 near the end of the Hopkins bench.
Phillips first played in the Hopkins youth program as a sixth-grader. He wound up on the C team, the third-tier traveling team.
A year later, his mother, Patty Bilbery, picked him up at school after the last day of tryouts. "There were tears that day," she said. "He had been cut from the B team and someone told him the C roster was set. He said, 'I don't think I made a team.' "
The trauma passed, and he was added to the C team. And when the season was over, Elston spent hours shooting on the court his stepfather had built for him.
"I made the A team in the eighth grade," he said. "That was a shock to everyone, including me. Some guys said, 'You must have worked hard this summer, because you're a lot better.' Others said, 'You're not that good.' "
Every player on the team gets minutes in the eighth grade. "That changes when you get to the ninth grade," Phillips said. "It's about winning. I was on the A team again, but I didn't get off the bench at all.
"I played AAU ball after that season, and I went to some camps. But I lost a little bit of my fire. I didn't spend as much time working on basketball."
Elston never was blessed with the talent to coast. He was cut during tryouts for the sophomore team.
"I started telling myself, 'Maybe I shouldn't play,' " he said. "As I said, I was depressed. I even started falling behind in school."
Enter Cosgriff, the man Elston and his family refer to as "Coach C." Phillips' fire for basketball was rekindled when he saw the enthusiasm and camaraderie shared by the Hopkins girls' team.
"I went to three camps this summer at the university," he said. "Those were good, but the one that helped me more than any camp I ever attended was a Nike camp at St. John's. It was five days. You stayed overnight and practiced three times a day. It was great."
Phillips was hoping that what he had picked up there would get him one of 18 places on the Hopkins varsity for this season. He was cut on the last day of tryouts with two or three other players.
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