By RENALDO DORSETT
Tribune Sports Reporter
rdorsett@tribunemedia.net
WITH two decades of service in the Bahamas with his series of basketball camps, Sam Nichols looks to use his platform to help students displaced by Hurricane Dorian.
Nichols and his Basketball Smiles programme has partnered with Kelly’s Home Centre to facilitate the purchase of school supplies to help students adjust to a difficult transition in their new environments.
Nichols used his platform to discuss plans for the programme on KTAB 4U, an NBC affiliate in Abilene, Texas.
“We have been doing work in the Bahamas for 20 years having the largest free basketball camp in the Caribbean. We have a lot of kids from Grand Bahama, Abaco and the northern portion of the Bahamas that come to our camp but there are about 10,000 displaced students in the Bahamas.
“You think life goes on after a tragedy but school has started and many of them had to go to Nassau to move in with relatives because they had nowhere else to go. Literally they have nothing, so we have been in constant communication with the people that we work with, school administrators, counsellors, coaches, trying to see what we can do to help these 10,000 displaced students,” he said.
“We’re having the school counsellors go in there and get what these students need, school supplies and anything else to return to some form of normalcy and their needs met now. No shipping costs, no bureaucracy, no red tape get these supplies and get them ready to school.”
Basketball Smiles moved into its 20th edition last summer, continuing the mandate of its original mission statement of youth development through basketball and life skills.
Over the past two decades, the group has conducted free basketball camps for both girls and boys, most recently at the Anatol Rodgers Gymnasium.
The programme was first introduced in 1999 by Nichols, a Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach from McMurray University, and his wife Sandy Nichols.
Nichols developed a working relationship with local women’s basketball icon Patricia ‘Pattie’ Johnson of the HO Nash Junior High School Lions.
Basketball Smiles began with about 80 campers and continues to attract an average of 300 campers each year, who are taught by 10-14 coaches from the United States.
The motto of Basketball Smiles is: “We bring a week of smiles and hope through basketball. According to Nichols: “We conduct a daily life skills programme during the camp that emphasises self-respect, academic success, good citizenship, and spiritual values. Our goal is not just to develop basketball players, but help build future leaders in the Bahamas.”
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