NY Times piece quotes Pete Strickland: “It’s almost like Nixon’s White House,” he said. “There’s a lot of guys with blind ambition.”

That was a pretty mild piece compared to what really goes on. Try coaching a 7th or 8th grade game with talented kids in one of the AAU leagues. You will have every coach in the WCAC, IAC and a few others suddenly try to become your best friend in the hopes that you can influence the kid's school choice. Some of these schools are even watching 4th/5th graders now in hopes they can get them into their middle schools.

Good article.  Not sure if it's better or worse than European soccer and basketball teams stocking up kids of the same age in their developmental leagues.

BTW, the player referred to at the end of the article is probably Will Ferguson.

 Or the military, which was pushing classmates to join its high school ROTC program while we were still in middle school (called "junior high" back then).

You know, GWAA, you could have been a leader, had you joined. A leader of other junior high kids. What a blast!!