I dont think this is anything unique to Camden. Many public schools offer tuition paid admission for kids from outside the district. I remember that Haddonfield had a 7' center a few years back that led them to multiple state championships and lived in the next town over.
Pretty sure we didn’t try to recruit DJ. We were a pretty bad program at the time Dajuan was in high school, and he was the number 1 recruit in the country at the time, so we had no shot at him. Funny story, after his freshman year at Memphis, Calipari pulled his scholarship to force him into the draft, said he would be giving up too much money to come back to school.
Not every public school is equal. Certain public school districts are given advantages to stabilize and improve the students' performance. Camden has magnet high schools within the district. They can accept students from outside, and they can play sports at the other schools within the school district. Bergen County has a magnet school within Englewood high school to attract a diverse group of kids from outside of Englewood to a school. Otherwise, the school is racially segregated from the actual town's diverse makeup.
And many public schools simply break the rules and take kids from outside the district by giving them fake addresses. This happened at my high school all the time and was the reason we were a state power in one particular sport. The only real difference is that Camden basically does it out in the open and doesn't care because they know they won't be penalized.
Well I got that wrong. Do they have magnet schools? I know there was some end around they were using to get kids in.
Was there? Not sure why you think that?
Yes. They use magnet schools to get kids into the district. Those schools don't have athletics, so students can choose to play at Camden or Woodrow Wilson.
IIRC Carl Anthony Towns father was the head coach at Piscataway Vo Tech at the time. I remember when his kid was in 8 th grade he told me John Calipari was interested in him from an AAU tournament. I was thinking he’s full of crap… Joke was on me 😉
Towns went to the middle school where I teach. It's probably true. He was maybe the most extraordinary 8th grade athlete I've ever seen.
