City of Basketball Love

By Josh Verlin (@jmverlin)
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A trip to Best Buy became a whole lot more for Shawn Rodgers. 

It was two years ago that Rogers and his wife Egypt went out to the electronics store, shopping for a television for Egypt’s nail studio in Chester. Browsing around, she picked up a digital camera, snapped a photo of her husband, and showed him the result. 

“I was like ‘dang, this looks good,’ so we bought the camera,” he said. “And I’ve been shooting ever since.”

Little did Rodgers know that his spur-of-the-moment purchase would end up paving the way for what’s become his calling, one that’s making an impact for high school ballplayers across Southeastern Pennsylvania. 

You might have seen the 6-foot-8 young man with a thin beard standing up in the bleachers at a game the last two years, camera always at chest height, head looking down at the screen as he pans around the gym.  

Most people who encounter Rodgers don’t know his name, just his channel, Rare Footage. They call him “Rare,” a moniker he’s more than fine with. It’s a name, he said, that came from a sneaker resale business he’d kicked around, noting the handle worked well when he pivoted to video. 

His videos have been popping up all over social media the last couple seasons, mostly single-game mixtapes, a high volume of 30-second to 60-second clips showing an array of buckets, passes, blocks, dunks, steals, all ending with a local player saying his brand name. If you’re reading this, you’ve probably seen one — and if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen a hundred.

“His work ethic is off the charts right now,” Imhotep Charter head coach Andre Noble said.

But it wasn’t always that way.

Born in the West Oak Lane section of Philly, Rodgers was raised by Ruth Rodgers, his father not around much, spending multiple stints incarcerated. The second of three brothers, Shawn grew up in a basketball-playing household; his older brother, Scott Rodgers, played at Central High and then Drexel (2005-09), and younger brother Chase Rodgers starred at Martin Luther King. 

Shawn picked the game up early, remembering games at Simons Rec with Scott, the two playing on youth travel teams together.

Ruth did her best to set a good example, putting herself through La Salle to get her bachelor’s degree while raising her boys, even going to a year of graduate school, all while working minimum-wage jobs. 

“My religion teacher told me, she said you have three sons, statistics show that your kids will end up in jail or dead,” she recalled. “I said ‘I refuse to lose one of my children.’ I had to work hard with Shawn, though. But it was worth it.”

Her middle child was a good student in elementary and middle school, though not quite good enough to follow his older brother to Central, one of the top public schools in the city. Shawn ended up going to Martin Luther King, where he ended up falling into the wrong crowd.

“The years I was there, it was a rough stop, and I just fell victim (to) my environment, which led me to get into a little bit of trouble,” he said. “Before then I used to work hard, I just got caught up.”

After what he said were “petty drug” and assault cases, Rodgers ended up spending time at the now-closed Saint Gabriel’s hall, a residential rehabilitation and educational facility for teenage boys who’ve been involved in the juvenile court system. When he left Saint Gabriel’s, he enrolled at Imhotep Charter, where Noble was in his early years of building what’s become arguably the state’s premiere hoops powerhouse of the 21st century.

Due to his brother’s success, he joined Noble’s Panthers. A 6-foot-8 wing forward, he had all the length and athleticism he needed, but didn’t work hard at his game, and didn’t have the natural talent of his brothers. 

“I wasn’t really good, I’m not going to lie, and I didn’t work as hard as I should,” he admitted, “but I wasn’t really as good. I got lucky.”

Rodgers (top row, 3rd from left) in his senior year at Imhotep; ineligible as a fifth-year senior, he was ironically listed as "team videographer" but said he never actually fulfilled his duties. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

He improved enough over the course of his years at Imhotep to get interest from D-II schools; a brief stint at East Stroudsburg didn’t go well, but he ended up at D-III Thomas College (Maine) for the 2008-09 season. There, he shot better than 55% from the floor and averaged double figures, winning Rookie of the Year in his conference; he then came down to Lincoln University, where he finished up his career in 2012.

From that point on it was a series of jobs and business ideas: mowing grass, working for a friends’ cleaning business. He attempted to start a flower shop in Chester.

Basketball was always in the back of his mind, but he wasn’t involved with the game for the better part of a decade. 

“I would go to games as a casual fan [...] a lot of my friends’ kids played or my older friends’ kids played, or it’d be kids that’s not getting recognized or seen like they should,” Rodgers said. “I said ‘instead of us having these barber shop talks or everybody complaining, let me see if I can (fill) that piece of that void.’”

It wasn’t until he picked up that camera in Best Buy that the pieces started to click together. He would head out from the suburban home -- where he lives with his wife, Egypt, along with her daughter Azore (15) and his son Caiden (10), whom they raise together -- find a game, and start shooting.

“I started off with taking pictures of the players and putting them up, this kid at this game, a few stats that I would keep, and eventually I started doing video,” he said. “I would do three games a day if I can —- 3:15, a 5:30 and a 7 o’clock, five days a week, and then I would just put the kids out there. And then kids would tell me who’s going on visits and tell me the schools are using the videos to recruit the kids, and that gave me more motivation to go.

“I realized I wanted to be like a SportsCenter, the house of highlights for recruiting for high school kids.”

Just a couple years into his video journey, RareFootage is an established brand in the region. Rodgers can be seen in gyms around the area, usually tucked up in the corner of the bleachers, six or eight rows up, purposefully avoiding the camera scrums now commonplace on high school baselines. 

He’s become known for how quickly his highlight tapes hit social media, Rodgers often popping over to his laptop between games of an event to get some clips out, his in-game process keeping things organized. They’re not long or fancy, no overlaid music or graphics, just the highlights.

“When I’m doing a 10-game tournament, I want to get it first so the world can see it first,” he said. “I’ll delete [clips] as the game’s going on, and once the game’s over, I’ll see who’s the player of the game, then it’ll take me 7 minutes, 10 minutes, and I just get it out there.

“I try to get it done before they come out of the locker room.”

At many games in the area, you can see Rodgers (background, standing) up in the corner with his camera. (Photo: Josh Verlin/CoBL)

Rodgers’ coverage includes both the boys and the girls’ sides of the area, though he’s really found an unexpected niche on the girls’ side. 

“I was never into girls basketball until the summer when I first started and I went to SheElite in the summertime,” he said. “And when I saw [Penn Charter’s] Ryan Carter make a basketball play, I didn’t know girls could play like that, have game like that. I would never watch girls’ basketball so when I saw her make a move and saw how skilled the girls are, I fell in love with the girls game.”

“I’m so proud of my guy,” Noble said. “I told him I’m proud of how much he’s grown, and the impact he’s had locally, really; the boys’ interest is cool, but I’m really super-proud of the girls’ interest that he’s been focused on in the area.”

Since starting RareFootage, Rodgers has expanded into hosting a couple off-season high school team events, while others pay him to create mixtapes; he still estimates that the majority of his coverage is unpaid, just networking and shooting pro bono to keep expanding his brand. 

Rodgers said the idea to build a national platform, though he added there’s “no end goal” in mind. He just wants to be RareFootage for as long as he can.

“When I put my mind on things, I don’t really have a plan B, it’s got to work,” he said. “That’s really how I look at life, everything I put my mind to, it’s Plan A or nothing. There’s no Plan B.”