Hoop Dreams

The Perez Zeledon basketball camp is a bit of a Peace Corps Costa Rica tradition. It’s been going on for some eight or nine years, and, as such, has become part of the summer for many of the youth in Perez Zeledon, a good sized regional city in southwestern Costa Rica. The camp actually fits into a lot of the things the Peace Corps tries to do. It encourages youth to be active, which is one of the goals of the 'Youth and Families' program. Additionally, it causes lots of Costa Rican-American interaction and shares basketball, part of American culture with Costa Rica-which has some basketball awareness, but is pretty much a soccer, soccer, and soccer country. 

I was charged with coaching Team Orange, one of the two 12-14 year old groups. They were supposedly ‘advanced’ but when we split the teams up nearly all the kids wanted to be in the ‘beginner’ group, so we pulled some kids from that group to mine. Which was still unfortunate for Andrew W., a buddy of mine that was in charge of Team Green, the other group of 12-14 year olds, which was about twice the size of my group, and seemed to have all the kids with bad attitudes. My group of 10-12 kids was awesome, and Davey, another volunteer, helped me out for some of the week, and he was as awesome as the kids. 12-14 year olds can be a tough group to work with: more concerned with being rebels or impressing some girl or guy than they are with learning how to dribble well or shoot a lay-up, but my kids were great. Interestingly, I had a few girls in my group that were on an organized team, so three of the best four kids in the group were girls. 

(Davey and I with Team Orange)

I had an awesome time at the camp. Although I looked quite a fool most days of the camp, as the smallest orange shirt I could find at my local ‘Ropa Americana’ store was a men’s XL (who’s buying XXL orange t-shirts in Puerto Viejo de Sarapiquí…I don’t know), the kids on my team treated me with respect and tolerated my bad jokes and generally responded well to my demands. Of course, I was the only coach to provide each kid with an orange wristband (made from the cutoff sleeves) and with candy (they got candy if they remembered to wear their wristbands…I was all about Team Orange). After morning stretches led by me and my buddy Elliot, we went through different stations (lead by other volunteers) and then ended each day with a scrimmage. The camp was all morning, and then the afternoon was filled with either pick up games amongst us volunteers, ultimate games, or strolls through Perez Zeledon. I usually ended my strolls at the McDonald’s.

(lay-up station)

We all slept and ate at the gym, which had rooms and bathrooms, as well as a small kitchen (the gym is part of the city sports complex). It was great to see a bunch of my coworkers for an extended period of time, and we had lots of fun playing basketball and ultimate. A number of staff members came by one day, and Steve, our country director (the top boss) proved quite adept at ultimate. I’ve always loved playing basketball, and have also really enjoyed my experiences as a coach, so for me, basketball camp was one heck of a good time. Too bad it’s just once a year.