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Montserrat basketball camp is fulfilling experience
for Chillicothe director of athletics
National team to play on campus in October
David Shoemaker’s recent participation in leading a basketball camp on the island of Montserrat exceeded the high expectations he had for the camp, in terms of numbers and the experience itself. The first-ever “Reach One Teach One – Building Bridges to Success” camp was held Aug. 16-20, and organizers were hoping for 40 participants.
Instead, the actual numbers more than doubled expectations, the Ohio University-Chillicothe director of athletics noted.
“The organizers told me before camp began that if we had 25 kids attending the morning youth camp and 15 attending the over-17 evening camp, a total of 40, they would consider it a success,” Shoemaker said. “We ended up with 50 in the morning and 40 in the evening, a total of 90. Since the Montserratian government wants to use basketball to help in the development of their kids and the publicizing of their island, they were ecstatic at the results.”
As an added bonus, the Montserrat national team will travel to this region in late October for a series of games and practices. Included is a game vs. Chillicothe’s men’s team at 6:30 p.m. Oct. 23 in the campus’ Shoemaker Center.
“Due to the overwhelming response from the citizens and athletes on Montserrat, the government approved a trip to Ohio for the National Team, a team I selected while there,” said Shoemaker, who coached the Montserrat national team in the 1990s. “The team will arrive on October 20 and stay a week, playing Ohio colleges and attending basketball practices at both Ohio State and West Virginia.”
It will be an adventure in many ways for the Montserratian athletes, many of whom have not travelled beyond the island.
Montserrat is a British territory in the Leeward Islands that is part of the chain of islands known as the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean Sea. The island is approximately 10 miles long and 7 miles wide with approximately 6,000 residents.
The basketball camp was an uplifting experience for Shoemaker, who was impressed by the enthusiasm of the participants and others on the island.
“Overall the trip was unbelievable. The people of Montserrat were warm, open, incredibly friendly, and amazingly hospitable,” he said. “The camper’s attitudes were amazing. Though many are displaced by an active volcano on the island, to an athlete they had the most wonderful and positive outlook on life. There are no McDonald's, no Walmarts, no movie theaters, none of the common conveniences that most kids have, yet none of this seemed to matter to them. They were so coachable, and it was refreshing.”
Further information about the camp is available online at http://montserratbasketball.blogspot.com/
Details about the upcoming Montserrat national team’s trip to Ohio will be shared closer to the date of the trip.
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