Crane High School in Chicago, Known for Basketball, Fights Closing As Willie Conner stood alongside his fellow Crane High School seniors last week, clutching a rose and looking down at the hardwood floor, his final home game in a Cougars uniform was not the only thing on his mind. "We're not just playing for our fans and our coach and ourselves," Conner said. We're playing for our whole school. Chicago Public Schools announced plans in November to phase out Crane, which would end one of the city's most storied basketball programs. The announcement came just a few days before the Cougars" first game of the season in December. "My first thought was just "Wow!" " said Chris Head, Crane's head coach. The thought of phasing out a school with such history, such tradition. How could you do it? Crane was a charter member of the Chicago Public League in 1913. It is second in the city for most league titles with 11. Its rival Marshall has 12. The school has produced numerous N.B.A. players, including Ken Norman, Tony Allen and Will Bynum, as well as the longtime Chicago Bears owner George Halas. Halas's grandson, the Bears co-owner Patrick McCaskey, wrote a letter in December to the Chicago Public Schools chief executive, Jean-Claude Brizard, to express his support for Crane. That same month, the high school received a George Halas plaque and a $20,000 donation from the McCaskey family. "It's about the history of the school and the meaning that it has to the McCaskey family," a Bears spokesman, Scott Hagel, said. Crane, a technical school on West Jackson Boulevard, has struggled academically. In 2011, according to C.P.S. statistics, the school was graduating only 48 percent of freshmen within five years. Only 5 percent of students met or exceeded Prairie State Achievement Exam standards, compared with a C.P.S. average of 28.8 percent. The 2011 dropout rate hit 29.2 percent, compared with a 7.2 percent average. "Crane has been on probation for 10 consecutive years," a C.P.S. spokeswoman, Marielle Sainvilus, said. The basketball team has fared better, though not at its historic peak. The Cougars are 5-4 in the Public League this year and 16-7 over all. They exited the Public League playoffs Friday with a second-round loss. Ed Porter, who played on the school's city championship team in 1968, remembered when Crane was a West Side powerhouse that brought in big crowds, long before the Bulls moved in a few blocks away. "You couldn't get a seat in the gym," he said. It would be packed to the door, standing room only. Most of the fans came from the neighborhood. At that time, Crane drew students from three housing projects - Rockwell Gardens, the Henry Horner Homes and ABLA, also known as the Village. All three were hotbeds for basketball talent. Porter and his teammates would play over the summer for Willie White, whom the players called Big Willie for his imposing frame. Fiercely competitive tournaments at places like Gladstone Playground helped ensure the team kept in top form. "He was one of the best playground basketball coaches that ever lived," Porter said of White. When you got back to school, you were ready. When Porter goes to games now, he doesn't see the same neighborhood support. Most of the projects are gone, replaced by condominiums and schools. Despite the changing demographics, he says Crane's players carry the same passion and drive he and his teammates had more than 40 years ago. It was like a family. If you made Crane's basketball team, it was a commitment for life," Porter said. Those kids that are playing over there now? They know what they need to do. They know what it means to play for Crane. The weight of that history is not lost on this year's team. "I think about it all the time," said RaySean Walker, a senior guard. If we do something big, maybe it can send a message to the board to not close our school down. The team may have some reason to hope. An independent hearing officer recently filed a recommendation to the Board of Education to reconsider the proposal to phase out Crane, and a group of parents and community members filed a lawsuit Thursday to block the board's Feb. 22 vote on proposed school closings. Still, only a handful of schools have been saved in recent years. If Crane is phased out - it will stop admitting new freshman classes - the basketball program will last three more years at most. "Our seniors are taking it real hard," Coach Head said. The whole mind-set has changed. They've taken a vested interest in trying to prove that Crane is a worthwhile entity in the public school system. Roses in hand, Crane's seniors received framed jerseys to commemorate their time with the Cougars and took their home court for the final time, defeating Manley High School, 69-59. After the game, the seniors returned to the court to take pictures with their teammates, coaches and families. Willie Conner looked down at the floor once more, taking in its scuffs and blemishes from years of Cougar basketball. "This is our school," he said. And we ain't going nowhere.