Mike Evans Talks Full Court Peace to Sunrise Rotary

If the Chinese proverb "The journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step" holds true, Mike Evans has provided the Westport Sunrise Rotary with a sterling example. 

Evans, who spoke to the Rotary club last week, was a basketball star at Weston High School, went on to Hamilton College, and graduated with a degree in education in 2005.  Disdaining a "regular job," and wanting to pursue his dream of playing basketball professionally, he moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland.

Once in Belfast, he found calling professional basketball "casual," to be an overstatement.  But as a physical education teacher, he determined to make basketball a catalyst to bring together Catholic and Protestant children.  Their lives are imbued with a hatred most can not explain from childhood, and they attend an education system that's 96 percent segregated by religion,

Evans' first effort, with large groups of kids, didn't work.  So he tried again, coaching two small teams of high school age boys.  He worked separately with his two teams, each in their own neighborhood, and without telling either about the other.

The first joint practice did not go well. 

Both groups walked out of the gym. For many subsequent practices, not a word was spoken between the groups.  Neither would cross over the half-court line to play with, much less talk to, their teammates.

They played their first game against a strong team.  Evans' Belfast Blazers were dramatic underdogs.  They played hard and won, but didn't bond.  It took their only loss to bring them together.

Another dramatic turn came late in a game they were leading by seven points.  Coach Evans told his Blazers to keep dribbling to run out the clock and preserve the win – and to talk to each other on defense.  Basketball teams have to talk to be successful.  Still, they refused.  Suddenly, one of the team's leaders ignored everything Coach Evans had said, and launched a long shot.  The coach's eye told him it had no chance to go in.  He feared the other team would grab the errant shot, score and go on a game winning run.  Out of nowhere, a Blazer near the net jumped up, snatched the ball before it hit the rim and slammed it through – an alley oop play - that brought the few fans to their feet, and became a turning point in their relations.  The team admired the shot, and began to talk to each other.

That team became the first involved in the program of Full Court Peace, an organization Mike Evans has dedicated to using basketball to bring together people in areas of strife. Supporters paid to bring the team to Weston to play a few games.  They were guests of several Weston families, and stayed in houses that to the lads from Belfast looked like hotels.  They didn't fare well on the court, losing every game.  Evans described it as "ugly, but they loved it."

Their final treat was an overnight stay in a New York hotel, a gift of one of the Weston families.  At what should have been bed time, Evans went from room to room and found no one.  Then, on the 35th floor, he heard what sounded like 30 seconds of an Irish rebel song, followed by an equal length of another coming from one room.  Fearing the worst, he warily walked into the room.  Instead he saw the boys finally talking – playing first a Catholic song, which one of the Catholic boys explained, followed by a Protestant song.

Real communication had, at long last, begun.

Evans turned the Belfast project over to others to return home and start two new journeys.  One is a program in Cuba, where he traveled this August to use basketball to teach democracy to teenagers.  The other will focus on Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where he seeks to be a ray of hope amid all the drug related strife.

Mike Evans may not yet have journeyed 1,000 miles, but he's taken a large first step.  His organization, Full Court Peace, has become a vehicle to make a large impact on a small number of people.  One can only hope that the longer journey brings about greater understanding.

To learn more about Evans and Full Court Peace, click here.