Sports

U.S. Basketball Coaches’ Clinic Lifts Bahamian Hoop Dreams

By Eric Green

Washington — A paradise of fun, sun and surf is what tourists may associate with the Bahamas.

But a serious purpose for those living in the Bahamas is to use the sport of basketball to guide the Caribbean nation’s young people away from negative influences and toward making the right choices in life.

Supported by U.S. Embassy Nassau in the Bahamas, an August 6–7 basketball coaches’ clinic conducted by the Bahamas Basketball Federation (BBF) brought eight of the top college and secondary school coaches in the United States to the Bahamian capital of Nassau. The goal: for U.S. coaches to exchange teaching philosophies with their Bahamian counterparts and stress the importance of fundamentals and team play in basketball.


Tyrone Sawyer, director of sports development in the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism.

Erica Thibault, U.S. Embassy Nassau’s public affairs officer, said the embassy’s backing for the coaches’ clinic is part of ongoing efforts by U.S. Ambassador to the Bahamas Nicole Avant “to further strengthen the U.S.-Bahamas bilateral partnership by supporting Bahamian initiatives designed to empower youth and encourage young people to stand up to negative peer pressure.”

The embassy bought a set of tickets to support the BBF and then donated the tickets to Special Olympics-Bahamas. In addition, on August 6, the embassy’s financial management officer, David Hamiel, joined the BBF in kicking off the monthlong series of exhibition/scrimmage basketball games — dubbed the “Summer of Thunder” — at the opening ceremony.

The clinic, the first of its kind in the Bahamas, helped expose Bahamian coaches to the U.S. college basketball style of play and coaching, said BBF General-Secretary Sean Bastian. The clinic and the Summer of Thunder also were designed to increase the pool of qualified coaches in Bahamas youth programs and to stimulate recruitment of Bahamian students to U.S. colleges while promoting tourism to the Bahamas, said Bastian. The BBF is the Bahamas’ governmental body for basketball.

The Summer of Thunder matchups include the University of North Carolina, the U.S. national college champion in 2009, playing the Commonwealth Giants on August 11 and the Bahamas All-Stars on August 12, while Ohio University and Portland State University (in Oregon) meet the Bahamas All-Stars on September 1 and September 12 respectively.

Larry Tidwell, a clinic participant and the women’s basketball coach at Lamar University in Texas, said the “strongest attribute” he wanted to convey to his colleagues is that “organization through a hard work ethic equals success.”
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Sean Bastian, general secretary of the Bahamas Basketball Federation; David Hamiel, financial management officer for U.S. Embassy Nassau; Charles Maynard of the Bahamas Ministry of Youth, Sports, and Culture; Tyrone Sawyer, director of sports development in the Bahamas Ministry of Tourism

Tidwell said “basketball is an international sport and it helps in bridging the gap in understanding and communicating with other cultures.” Quoting the late U.S. sportswriter Heywood Hale Broun, Tidwell said “sports do not build character, they reveal it.”

Cliff Ellis, another participant and the men’s basketball coach at Coastal Carolina University, said his advice to the coaches is to “always strive to learn from others but you must find your own philosophy and be your own person.”

BASKETBALL SCORES IN THE BAHAMAS

Larry Brown, an American who is the Bahamas national team’s technical director and who helped conceive the idea for the coaches’ clinic, said that in his five or six trips to the Bahamas in 2010 he has seen a “lot of growth” in basketball in that country.

The BBF is “really working hard to promote the sport and help kids overcome” negative peer pressure, said Brown. (Brown is not the same Larry Brown who coaches in the professional National Basketball Association.)

To ensure that the Bahamas national basketball team can compete at a high level in international competition, Brown said fundamentals of the game are “so needed” in that nation, and the “importance of drills and team play cannot be overstated.” The coaches’ clinic is therefore even more important for Bahamian basketball.

Brown said being a basketball instructor every year since 1983 and also coaching a Venezuelan professional team, the Cocodrilos (Crocodiles) of Caracas, in 1998 and 1999 helped him learn the “most effective methods to teach coaches” how to “reach kids at every level” of development in the sport.

The Bahamian clinic’s staff are “all friends of mine who are greatly respected and successful coaches” in their own right, said Brown, who in August becomes the new executive director of the Florida Association of Basketball Coaches.

Other clinic participants included Frank Martin from Kansas State University, who coached his team to the final eight of the 2010 U.S. national collegiate basketball tournament, and Gale Goestenkors, coach of the University of Texas women’s team, which qualified for the 2010 U.S. national women’s college championship.

Their Bahamanian hosts included BBF President Lawrence Hepburn and Hugh Campbell, basketball coach of Tabernacle High School, which won a prestigious local secondary school championship in 2010. Campbell stressed at the clinic that having a “winning attitude” helps to achieve success in basketball and in life.

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