Len Elmore: Power Memorial Academy worth remembering

I was a 6-foot-5 student at Junior High School 123 in the Bronx when a substitute P.E. teacher saw me fooling around with a basketball. Playing to my adolescent insecurities, he said, "Don't you want to play a sport with someone your own size?"

I soon had my first practice on West 61st Street at Power Memorial Academy, the now-closed Irish Christian Brothers school that left me with so many warm memories of my time there as a student in the late 1960s. The problem was I didn't really know the rules of the game at the time — and thus I didn't know which way I was supposed to run after tip-off. Fortunately, I turned out to be a quick study.

As I began my playing career, comparisons to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were inevitable. I was a tall center at Power only a few years after he had led the team to a 71-game winning streak. Let's just say after my first day, the comparisons to Kareem stopped. Ultimately, our team finished with a 22-0 record and a No. 1 national ranking during my senior year.

Beyond success in sports, I received invaluable life guidance from our late coach Jack Kuhnert and many of Power's teachers, who stressed discipline, responsibility and the strength of education.

As part of the alumni's continuing effort to raise funds for partial scholarships at local faith-based high schools, the 80th anniversary celebration of Power Memorial Academy will be held this Saturday in Manhattan. Power closed its doors in 1984, having produced a lot of outstanding people and citizens. Our subsequent success has not diluted our attachment to the school: that attachment is a testament to the education and values we learned there.

Len Elmore, 10-year NBA and ABA veteran, is an ESPN and CBS analyst and CEO of iHoops. Elmore, 59, was previously a prosecutor in Brooklyn.