March 30, 2014 Basketball Academy's Empty Promises For one prep team, cramped apartments,
a few bucks for pizza, and barely any school David Purdy for The Chronicle Kingdom Prep Academy practiced
in Kingdom Courts
in Des Moines.
But the busy complex had room for the team only after 9 p.m. By Brad Wolverton S ix days before Christmas, Matt Najieb picked up a call from his son, Alex, an 18-year-old basketball player from Milwaukee who was spending the season at a prep school in Iowa. "Dad, they’re arresting the coach," Alex Najieb told his father. "They’re putting him in the police car right now." Alex’s team, Kingdom Prep Academy, had just finished a game in Idaho and was headed back to Des Moines through a snowstorm in Wyoming, when, according to a police video, its head coach, Joel D. Hannagan, had trouble controlling the team van. The police stopped him and found that he was driving with a suspended license. He was handcuffed and put i...