Findlay Prep, a fake high school basketball team, is now more fake than ever

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Las Vegas’ Findlay College Prep, in its four seasons of existence, has been a faux high school basketball team, what with no actual high school called Findlay College Prep. But with the imminent closing of the high school the players actually attend, Findlay Prep is getting a little faker.

The Henderson International School, where Findlay Prep players matriculate when they’re not jetting around the country to play other schools also burning to be faux national champion, said Feb. 26 it is shutting down its high school division after the 2009-10 school year ends, citing financial difficulties. Basically, other than players being bankrolled by auto dealership magnate Cliff Findlay, a former UNLV center and longtime Rebels booster, few in the extremely lousy economy of Las Vegas could afford an annual tuition that ran to near $41,000, including room and board.

High school losses running more than $1 million a year wouldn’t do for the school, owned by Meritas LLC, a company backed by private equity firm Sterling Partners, meaning that eventually this school was supposed to be part of a publicly traded, profit-making machine.

The mercenary roots of Henderson International were a good fit for Findlay College Prep, whose college preparation focused on getting players ready for college basketball. True, its “students” reportedly have acquitted themselves decently in the actual classroom, but the program’s success is measured by its national prominence and the players it put on college rosters. Its website has a Hall of Fame — anyone who joined a major college program. (New Hampshire, being Division I, counts.)

Findlay Prep, which imports all its players from outside Nevada, is the most obvious manifestation of how professionalized high school basketball has become, in large part as a response to competition from AAU ball and other elite leagues. ESPN, for one, is a willing participant in blowing up the stature of the most craven high school programs, putting together its ESPN RISE Tournament of Champions high school “national championship,” which of course includes Findlay Prep.

(As an aside, one invitee to that tournament, St. Patrick of Elizabeth, N.J., is in litigation with authority that runs New Jersey high school athletics, which will not release the school to play. The NJSIAA also has banned St. Patrick from its New Jersey state championship tournament. It appears to be a power struggle between the putative authority on athletics in the state, and a school that, like Findlay, gets players far from its local area and plays a national schedule. Findlay Prep solves this problem by not being a member of its state high school athletic association.)

If it weren’t for college programs requiring some minimum academic achievements, Findlay Prep could say, screw it, and just field its all-star team. However, it will have to find some other private school to glom onto to keep itself alive. Is there another one in Las Vegas? In Nevada? Who cares where it is? As long as it isn’t in a state with a lot of basketball talent, so Findlay Prep doesn’t have to freeze those players out so as not to run afoul of any basketball authorities.

Is there a private school in Idaho that has some room?