The school itself is little more than two nondescript khaki-colored buildings situated in a business complex on Elm Street in Waco.

The student body numbers only 92 at the UIL’s last count, and there are perhaps few schools in the area that have sprouted from more humbling beginnings.

But there’s been something special about the Rapoport Academy boys’ basketball team this year: Small in size has certainly not equated to small in stature.

(From left) DeAndre Cammon, C.J. DeJesus and Edward Cammon lead Rapoport Academy into its first playoff game tonight against Red Oak Life.
Duane A. Laverty/Tribune-Herald

“When I got here four years ago and I started mentioning, ‘In two years we’re going to be in UIL and we’re going to be in a district,’ they were like, ‘What’s a district?’ ” Ravens coach Gil Beckham said. “And when I started talking about playoffs the next year, that we could go to the playoffs, they said, ‘What’s the playoffs?’ ”

Beckham’s young Ravens were admittedly naive about the inner workings of high school basketball at the time, but few could make that claim anymore. Rapoport stormed through District 20-1A Division II with a perfect 14-0 slate this season and a 26-4 overall record, and the now No. 24-ranked Ravens are playing Red Oak Life tonight in Corsicana at 8 p.m. in the Class 1A area playoffs.

It’s the first playoff appearance in the school’s history after Rapoport joined the UIL before last season.

Beckham and Rapoport will forever share a common history. When the school named Beckham its first coach four years ago, it also marked Beckham’s first head coaching job, and he couldn’t even call it a rebuilding project — he simply had to cook up the program from scratch.

So how to start up a program with, at the time, a freshman class of just 15 total students?

Rapoport opened in the late ’90s with a kindergarten class and added a class each year. Beckham said the school will graduate its first seniors this year, so the oldest pool of players he had to draw from in his first year were freshmen.

There’s only one from the microscopic pool of candidates who has made it through all four years.

“It’s not even a team anymore, it’s pretty much a family,” said point guard C.J. DeJesus, who moved to Rapoport before his freshman year. “I consider all these guys my brothers, and it doesn’t matter about race or anything. And coach is like a second dad to me.”

The school itself bounced around from campus to campus in its infancy. It opened in a church basement that was prone to flooding and eventually found its way to Texas State Technical College by the time Beckham started his basketball project.

Beckham’s first team, which played whomever he could schedule and was routinely blown out, practiced on a dirt-strewn outdoor court there, and the program as a whole took a lot of early lumps.

Playing all 32 minutes

“It was frustrating,” said junior Josh Davis, who played on the school’s inaugural eighth-grade team. “We only had five people on the eighth-grade team — no subs.”

When the lease ran out at TSTC, the school moved to St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, which didn’t have a gym.

Once again, the basketball team was forced outside, this time to hold full practices on a small single hoop. Finally, the school moved to its current location, where it practices and plays at the YMCA just steps away from its two buildings.

DeJesus, who struggles with cystic fibrosis and has to monitor his physical output, said the team’s turning point this year came when he called for a meeting to discuss the team’s issues after the fourth practice of the year.

He boiled down four years of experience within the program to a few simple talking points, and the Ravens haven’t looked back since.

“We had a players’ meeting and we all told each other what our goal was for the season,” DeJesus said. “Now look at us. We’re going to the playoffs, we’re 26-4 and we’re just doing great.”

wparchman@wacotrib.com

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