The basketball program at the Bentalou Recreation Center lives by three rules:
- Listen.
- Remember (what you just listened to).
- No excuses.
These rules, created by the legendary Coach Herman Johnson, have transformed the Bentalou Recreation Center into the beating heart of its community. Thousands of kids have matriculated through the program, leveraging their experiences to become college athletes, embark on new careers and even, occasionally, go professional. No one can speak to the impact of this initiative better than alum and Coach Paul Franklin, who, alongside Coach Kelly Phillips, currently leads Bentalou’s basketball program.
In an interview with The News-Letter, Coach Paul commented on the philosophy of the program and its lifelong impact
“Bentalou absolutely prepared me for life itself,” he explained. “Because at the Center you learn that even if you have differences with people in the neighborhood or others, none of that transpires inside of the gym — everything’s dropped at the door. And in life, a lot of times, you have to drop your ego at the door. I learned that lesson early.”
An alum of Morgan State University and a Navy Veteran, Coach Paul also discussed another vital lesson the program instilled in him, one that he seeks to pass that along to the new generations.
“I also learned [at Bentalou] that you don’t win in everything in life, and that you lose sometimes, right?” he added. “And so the best thing to happen when you lose is to work hard, not to get mad about it, not to get upset or distracted, but to work harder to achieve what it is that you didn’t attain.”
Alongside its educational and athletic mission, the Bentalou Center is also a fully independent community recreation center, operating on a budget drawn directly from donations and some private grants. Coach Paul credits his wife, Celeste Nelson, with organizing vital fundraising initiatives and helping him continue the work of Bentalou.
In an interview with The News-Letter, Nelson discussed her motivations to work in community engagement:
“I’m from Brooklyn, NY., and when I came here [after meeting my husband], I was like ‘Wow.’ You know Downtown, by the Lexington Market, it looked kind of depressed,” she said. “So I was like, ‘What’s going on out here?’ And it was mostly people of color, my color. And I said ‘something happened here’, and I want to get involved.”
Nelson’s experience led her to create ITSUITSYOU, an organization dedicated to providing both career guidance and practical materials such as suits for young men in the Baltimore Community.
“What [the project] did is that it assisted people that were recovering addicts, ex-offenders and veterans,” Nelson revealed. “We started giving them life skills and looking at their profiles, and a lot of them had records, so we knew we couldn’t get them white-collar jobs. So we prepared them for blue-collar, and I [collaborated] with a lot of companies.”
At the Bentalou Center, Nelson both organizes the fundraising for the basketball team and has a mentorship initiative of her own, the Big Mama program for young girls. Funding is especially vital for activities such as Bentalou’s summer day camp Project Survival, which is free of charge for pupils, as well as organizing field trips for students.
On the subject of field trips, on Saturday April 5, 37 children from Bentalou arrived at the Johns Hopkins Athletic Center, greeted by Associate Teaching Professor in the History department Victoria Harms and several Hopkins football athletes who lead the Blue Jays for Baltimore nonprofit. Hosted as part of the Bentalou’s spring program, students came to the Homewood Campus to learn more about college athletics and to spend a day with the Hopkins community.
The morning’s first event was a talk by Life Design Lab educator for student-athletes, Antonio Boone, who spoke about the importance of maintaining high grades for becoming a college-level athlete.
“If you change your jersey number to the grades you got in school, would you still be proud of it?” he questioned.
Next, the kids watched Hopkins students play basketball in an informal practice before having the opportunity to show off their own hard-earned Bentalou basketball skills on the court. The Bentalou kids kindly explained the techniques they had learned from Coach Paul and Coach Kelly to many of the volunteers with no basketball experience.
Then, after many moments of fun-filled chaos on the courts, the kids gathered for a tour of the Hopkins athletes’ locker rooms and mini Q&A with Hopkins student athletes. They learned about both the fun and realistic facets of a student athlete’s life: decorating the locker room for “Senior Day,” the time demands of practices and the rehabilitation room for athletes with injuries.
COURTESY OF JULIA MENDES QUEIROZ
Bentalou Basketball Program kids play basketball with Hopkins Athletes.
Finally, to cap off the busy day, each one of the kids stood alongside a Hopkins Men’s Lacrosse player, as “anthem buddies,” for the National Anthem during the 2025 Homecoming lacrosse game against Ohio State University.
Current President and junior Brian Doherty and former Vice President and senior Oliver Craddock of Blue Jays for Baltimore, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, spoke to The News-Letter about how the event came to be and the burgeoning partnership between Blue Jays for Baltimore and the Bentalou Center.
Craddock explained the organization’s mission is centered around two important themes.
“One is helping kids and giving them opportunities — usually centered around sports, but just opportunities in general — in any way that we can, building connections and being mentors to kids in the community around us,” he explained. “The second is bringing the Hopkins community together, and that includes different sports teams and, just generally, professors like Professor Harms on campus.”
After the success of last week’s event, there will likely be many collaborations between Bentalou and Blue Jays for Baltimore in the future, as Doherty expressed hope that the two organizations would continue working together,
“I definitely think working with Bentalou is something that we want to keep doing moving forward. We want to continue to grow that relationship… but really, it's just, you know, asking [Bentalou] what they need, and going from there,” he added.
To support Blue Jays for Baltimore, readers can follow @bluejaysforbaltimore to learn more about their fundraising events, including concerts and trivia nights.
“Just coming to events like that and just supporting the cause, you know, paying a couple dollars, really does go a long way when we have big turnouts for those events. If anyone wants to get involved in a larger capacity…there's totally a need in the community, so if you have any ideas or just want to get involved in a larger sense, we totally have projects that we're thinking about,” Craddock says.
To support the Bentalou Center directly, readers can access its fundraising website, managed by Celeste Nelson, here. Bentalou is currently fundraising for Project Survival Summer Basketball. Additionally, the basketball program always welcomes spectators for its matches.
COURTESY OF JULIA MENDES QUEIROZ
The Hopkins Blue Jay mascot greets Bentalou basketball players at the Homecoming game.
