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27 March 2009
Kyrgyz Basketball Team Follows Hoop Dreams to United States
Youth team meets NBA stars, trains with collegiate players
Washington — A team of young basketball players from mountainous Kyrgyzstan has fulfilled a dream: to visit the home of the sport they love — the United States.
In a 10-day visit arranged by the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA), the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), the seven young male athletes, ages 15-21, are meeting basketball players at the school, college and professional levels.
This March 21-31 trip follows up on a visit to Central Asia by former NBA player Sam Perkins and Becky Bonner, assistant coach of the University of Louisville women’s basketball team. The pair was sent by ECA as sports envoys to conduct basketball clinics for youth in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan in August 2008.
Tragedy struck the Kyrgyzstan basketball team August 24, 2008, immediately after the visit. Ten members of the squad died in a commercial air crash as they were traveling to Iran for the Asian Basketball Youth Championship.
The Kyrgyz team includes survivors of the accident, accompanied by two coaches.
Heading the group is Bakhtiar Kadyrov, a veteran basketballer, and now a coach, educator and chair of his state assembly’s sports and youth committee. “Stepping onto the plane to come here was difficult,” Kadyrov said. “Their parents keep phoning us, but these boys just love to play ball. That is how we get past it.”
In addition to being a basketball star in his own country, Kadyrov is a hero. After surviving the crash, he saved a number of lives by repeatedly going back into the burning wreckage of the plane to carry out other survivors.
In Washington on March 23 the team was received by the NBA’s Washington Wizards. The Kyrgyz players met with the professional players before the Wizards’ match against the Chicago Bulls.
Kyrgyz coach Aleksei Sergienko, also traveling with the group, said his players were familiar with the U.S. basketball players through the Internet and satellite television.
In Indianapolis, the Kyrgyz youth squad is visiting the NBA’s Indiana Pacers, where former Pacer Sam Perkins is now a team vice president. The youths will see another NBA game there March 29: the Pacers versus the Wizards.
In Indianapolis, the Kyrgyz team has visited the NCAA Hall of Champions and will attend a game in the NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Championship — the highest level of U.S. collegiate sport, popularly called the “March Madness” tournament, one of the most popular annual sporting events in the United States.
The Kyrgyz youth met with high school counterparts in Maryland. In Indiana, they will attend the high school state championships featuring Bloomington South High School, and then they will scrimmage with the team.
Coach Dan Harwood of Magruder High in Derwood, Maryland, said the Kyrgyz players impressed him from the start. “As soon as they arrived, with no apprehension at all they just jumped in, were really attentive and worked hard when I put them together with my players in half-court play. They possess clear enthusiasm for the game, and for learning.”
Harwood, a coach for 27 years, calls sports “one of the greatest diversions in life,” noting from his experience as a teacher how sports not only unites people from around the globe, but also helps kids who have experienced tragedy to cope.
In the Washington area, the Kyrgyz players also visited American University and Bowie State University, where they took part in a skills clinic and a conditioning and strength workshop, and learned about U.S. policies guaranteeing sports-participation access to all. The visitors took part in a wheelchair basketball game at a recreation center in northeast Washington.
The team will conclude its busy tour with a stop at Indiana University. The university has the top Central Asian studies faculty in the United States.
“We have so much to absorb in a short period of time,” Kadyrov said. “As a coach, I want to learn about methods of training. We have come to look, to learn, and then to apply.”
Coach Sergienko added, “We want to establish exchange programs and look at sports education. Some things are similar, though at home we have fewer funds. But we also believe in inclusive education, the idea that all young people must have access to sports.”
“We want to observe and to learn, but also to play. We would love to see our teams be able to take part in international competition here in the United States,” Sergienko said.
The State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs organized the visit through SportsUnited, an international initiative to foster youth dialogue and forge cultural linkages through the medium of sports.
