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Touching lives through sport
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John David Walsh, New York-based basketball coach, was in the city recently to conduct a coaching camp and a players’ clinic. But he has an interesting mission too
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Photo: Karthik Krishnaswamy
MULTIFACETED John David Walsh
Were it not for the thump of bouncing basketballs, you could have mistaken the Nehru Indoor Stadium for a nervous classroom with a new teacher. Twinkling with floodlights above, the stadium’s mood is sombre below, full of the wary expressions of kids unsure of how to react as the new coach — big, blond, bespectacled — gestures with a restless energy that mirrors the electric blue of his basketball jersey. “You guys are too slow!” he exclaims.
Pretty soon, there’s a pulse of excitement, a giggle, evoked by the age-old technique of pitting the guys against the girls in a skills exercise. The guys lose, the coach orders their captain to sing. John David Walsh has broken the ice — as he has done for the last decade with kids from eight countries in three continents.
The New York-based basketball coach and founder of the JD Basketball School was in Chennai last week to work with the Sports Development Authority of Tamil Nadu for a three-day players’ camp and coaches’ clinic.
Eleventh visit
“This is my eleventh trip to India in the past three years,” says Walsh.
“I’ve run programmes in twelve different cities. I’m trying to get a feel for basketball all over the country, for two reasons — to continue my mission of social education through sport, and to develop the grassroots marketing of the game.”
This mission of social education through sport has taken Walsh to corners of the world torn by conflict, where basketball would at first sight seem incongruous. But Walsh says sport can play a part in the healing process. He cites the example of the basketball clinic he conducted in Gaza with the Sulha Peace Project, a grassroots organisation working towards bettering Israeli-Palestinian understanding.
“We didn’t know the first time how important it was for these kids to have an ice-breaker,” he says. “And once they had the ice-breaker they could talk, they could have mediation, and then I realised the power of sport as a tool to bring people together, especially in conflict regions.”
At a more individual level, he cites an example from a camp in Kashmir with CHINAR (Child Nurture and Relief), which works with children orphaned by war and natural disasters such as the 2005 earthquake. “One little girl hadn’t spoken since the earthquake. She was in the snow for three days; her whole family had died; she only survived by eating snow. She hadn’t spoken since then,” says Walsh.
“But she was getting close by the end of the basketball programme. She was having so much fun, she was feeling more and more secure.”
Many plans
Walsh reels off a list of plans, carrying a weight of ambition that has no effect on his level voice infused with a Long Island twang.
“I’m working on a project now with Jockin Arputham (winner of the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding), who’s the head of the National Federation of Slum Dwellers. We want to build basketball courts for the kids, get Google or Microsoft to sponsor wiring the slums of Bombay, so these kids can learn to use the Internet — so now we’re using the game as an educational tool,” he says.
“I’m very interested in New York and teen depression. It’s a major issue we have in New York, the suicide rates. So I wanna use the game as a tool and create awareness on teen depression ... I may be doing something in Somalia, and possibly Botswana. I’m getting calls from all over the world, people wanting me to come. Two programmes that I want to do, and I’ve been trying to get the OK to do is, one in Iran — to bring NBA coaches and do a coaches program in Iran — and also one in North Korea.”
All this apart, the rangy 36-year-old might soon make an appearance on Indian television. He’s in talks with NDTV, with whom he hopes to make basketball-themed reality TV. ‘Two different reality shows we have — one, finding the top basketball talent in India, almost like an American Idol kind of thing, where you vote someone out every week,” he says. “The second idea we’re working on is travelling around to different cities, learning about Indian culture through the eyes of the foreigner and through basketball.”
For more on JD Basketball, visit www.jdbasketball.com
I realised the power of sport as a tool to bring people together
KARTHIK KRISHNASWAMY
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