Santa Rosa council member Mark Stapp on his decade of basketball with San Quentin prison’s sports exchange program

The Kings had three chances to tie the home game with 15 seconds left on the clock, but they couldn’t nail a three.

The visiting team sealed the game from the free throw line, 82 to 77 — the second win of the day for newly elected Santa Rosa City Council member Mark Stapp, a volunteer player on visiting basketball teams at San Quentin State Prison.

“Coming into a correctional facility for over a decade has confirmed the value of the human beings here,” Stapp said after a winning effort against the Kings, the prison’s over-40 team, on Nov. 12.

The game was part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s longstanding efforts to employ sports to teach life skills such as teamwork, prosocial behavior, patience, unselfishness and good character.

CEOs, teachers, tech workers, former college players, and even some former professional players enter the prison on the shores of San Pablo Bay for weekly basketball games that pit visiting teams against in-house squads — matches meant to build positive ties between the prison and its residents, and surrounding communities.

Stapp has been part of the basketball program at San Quentin for over a decade. Over the past four years, he has served as a sponsor for the program, recruiting and bringing Bay Area teams who pass clearance checks into San Quentin for weekly games.

“San Quentin is part of our community, and it’s the job of the government — my job — to make sure every voice is included,” Stapp said.

The community incarcerated at San Quentin plays basketball on a court surrounded on one side by a fence adorned with barbed wire, next to a gate that leads to Mount Tamalpais College: the first accredited college on a prison compound.

The incarcerated men on the over-40 team wear real NBA jerseys donated by the Sacramento Kings. The outdoor court has fiberglass backboards and a digital scoreboard that sits on a courtside table. Prison residents don zebra-striped shirts to serve as referees, all of which gives the games an organized feel.

“This program is way bigger than basketball,” said Brian Asey, who is imprisoned at San Quentin and serves as general manager of the basketball program.

Many of the men in the program have committed serious or violent crimes, but have since embarked on a journey of rehabilitation. Community teams that visit on Saturdays to play against either the in-house Warriors or Kings aid in their rehabilitation.

At halftime during the November game, Stapp, 48, announced to the Kings that he was about to become a Santa Rosa City Council member. Stapp’s day job is at Sonoma State University, where he serves as senior director for corporate and foundation relations. He is also part of a team at the university that provides services for formerly incarcerated students on campus.

“It’s like a full-time volunteer position,” Stapp said of his council post. “It’s our way of giving back to the city my wife and I love. With our job schedules, we can make it work.”

Stapp said his interest in public policy led to him serving on Santa Rosa's Measure O Oversight Committee for three years; one of the committee's main areas of focus is violence and gang prevention. He also served on the Design Review Board for a year before his election to City Council. Running as an elected official was a natural extension of that work.

He was sworn into office, along with one other newly elected council member, Jeff Okrepkie, and reelected incumbents Victoria Fleming and Dianna MacDonald, on Dec. 13.

Stapp’s involvement in the prison program grew out of his love for basketball. A former high school player, he’s known on the court for his arching 3-pointshot. Stapp first visited San Quentin 11 years ago at the request of Ted Salveit, a friend who works as a teacher in the Bay Area and plays in local basketball leagues.

“I was playing for a team in San Francisco called the Bittermen,” Stapp said. “Ted got us together for what we thought would be one game at San Quentin.”

The experience was so impactful and fun that Stapp started visiting San Quentin almost every Saturday from March to November — the full prison basketball season. He even brought his wife, Viviann Stapp, to a game and has visited Vacaville State Prison to use hoops to make a difference.

The visiting teams that come into the prison are the only outside connections that some of the men get. The players on Stapp’s team come from the Bay Area. Throughout the pandemic, Stapp and the volunteers lost communication with the men inside, only receiving updates about the prison through press coverage. He resumed his visits last October.

“For you to come and do this, it’s awesome,” said Nashwan Batta, 50, who played his first season with the Kings after arriving at San Quentin in 2021. The prison’s court has become a refuge, he said.

“This is the best place I’ve ever been,” he said.

Over the years, Stapp said he has bonded with the men who have turned their lives around, several of whom have been paroled and have never returned to prison.

“Almost without exception they have found stable jobs and homes and are maintaining the social bonds with each other and with the volunteers that developed during the basketball seasons,” Stapp said. “Some of the men who have been released are now returning as volunteers for the games inside the prison walls.”

Santa Rosa has a county jail and some transitional houses, Stapp pointed out.

“Local government needs to make sure we are providing support for them,” he said. ”San Quentin has shown we can effectively provide men leaving prison assistance for them to have pathways to give back to their community.”

Rahsaan Thomas is best known as co-host “New York” on the Pulitzer Prize-nominated “Ear Hustle“ podcast and is a contributing writer for Current, The Marshall Project, and San Quentin News. He is the creator of Empowerment Avenue, an organization that acts as a bridge for incarcerated writers and artists.