Coach finds new measure of wealth

HE could tell you how he was supposed to meet up with Michael Jordan at the Ryder Cup but business got in the way of old friends reuniting and he had to settle for a phone call.

He could tell you how he had Scottie Pippen over for dinner not so long ago. He could tell you about his college career with Virginia Tech, when the Hokies were more than a decent college basketball programme, playing in front of 15,000 people a few times a week. He could tell you about sitting out the 1984 US Olympic trials in Colorado Springs as Patrick Ewing and Jordan made a team that would go on to win gold in Los Angeles, while he watched on from the bleachers and cursed a foot injury that cost him his shot.

But Gerald Kennedy doesn’t want to tell you about any of that. Instead, he leans back in a chair upstairs in the National Basketball Arena in Tallaght, hoarse and sweaty from an animated hour spent coaching the U16 girls from Caritas College in Ballyfermot through a semi-final. It’s a very different type of glory to the one he grew up with but it’s one which has him every bit as emotional and excited as younger years spent flirting with the big time.

It’s that which consumes his life these days and it’s that which he wants to talk about. It’s still sport, just not as he once knew it.

“It’s a huge journey to end up here with these kids,” he notes as he smiles his addictive smile.

“But I’ve no regrets about where I could have been. I wouldn’t be here with them except for everything that happened. My girls ask me if I miss the old days and I say if certain things didn’t happen, we wouldn’t know each other. Now this is our time together and I enjoy this as much as any championship I’ve ever won in my career. We’re changing lives with this sport and this team. And I’m with my girls.”

His girls. Just a couple of hours ago, he was up and down the line, stressed that they weren’t playing with the heart he has taught them about and the heart he showed when lighting up courts with a Grace Jones flat top. While it’s a whole lot better than it used to be, the standard in the school is still limited. But that’s not the reason he and the others helping out these students care so much.

Earlier, as he inspired his team during a physical match-up, some conversations with those watching on told you a story that’s about so much more than a game. In a part of Dublin more famed for it’s gang activities, each player has a tale they’d prefer not to tell because of ill-placed shame.

One of those cheering on is Dympna Byrne, who runs the school completion programme, and she paints a dark picture of some of the lives away from the court.

“To give you a sense of it, we get funded for school dinners and we can feed 30 but it’s not enough. Today we had five more than that looking for food. They don’t even have salt in the house and you try and make exceptions because you don’t want them to go hungry. But there are so many challenges. Teen pregnancy is a problem. Some girls might come from a bad home and having a kid seems like a new start as they can move on with their lives, get a new house and begin again. They are usually older but there was one 14-year-old recently. That’s the same age as these girls, and just look out there. They are kids, just babies.

“There are mental health problems. You see self harm in this environment. Eating issues are prevalent, be it overweight or underweight. Guns aren’t uncommon in this area. Alcohol and drugs are a huge problem with their parents. They regularly have to leave their homes with just the clothes on their back and go to another family member because of drink.

“And being girls, a lot of them, even the younger ones, have to do the mammying. They might be getting in trouble for texting in class when they are just responding to a message about having to go to the chipper on the way home and provide dinner.

“They have to get sisters and brothers up and out in the morning and have to come into us after all that. It all leads to regular, as well as mental, health problems such as diabetes.”

Each problem she lists is only a sentence on this page, but as you watch the game reach it’s conclusion you realise each is linked to a young life. More and more, as this recession takes hold, analysts refer to a lost generation.

But much worse, in front of you is a forgotten generation that has been allowed fail without society even glancing in their direction. But as PE teacher Mary Byrne points out, this is the first real generation in the area completing leaving certs and basketball, of all things, is helping them through it.

She said: “This is an escape and they come to school for this. There’s a noticeable difference between those that play and those that don’t. It’s about participation, getting social skills.

“Even going through the school corridors you can see a difference in them as basketball shows them what they can be, that they can be successful. If we lost these teams it would impact hugely on mental health and, honestly, I think it would lead to an increase in self harm. It would certainly impact on their school work, increase drop-outs without a doubt and impact hugely on their quality of life.”

Recently, when Ireland trials were held, only one from the school went. It wasn’t because of talent but because many couldn’t find a way to make it to the session. Dympna Byrne thought about cancelling a family engagement to bring more but realised you have to draw a line. However, one of the few mothers watching the game as the last whistle blows recalls a trip they took to Tarbert in Kerry for the All-Ireland semi-final in October. She laughs about a visit to a decent restaurant for breakfast on the way and how they were explaining to the players about side plates and all the different cutlery on the table.

“Half of them had never been out of Dublin. So it’s more than just basketball. Even after we lost that game, one of the girls had never been on a holiday, and kept talking about how this was a great day out. So to lose this programme would be horrific.”

But it’s also a real possibility.

Dympna Byrne is getting texts, updating her on the budget speech. They run this programme as well as summer camps for e10,000 a year but already their funding has been cut by a third. Any more and come January there may not be basketball. In other words, so soon after a door was finally opened for these kids, there’s a chance it will be slammed right back in their faces. The students supporting the team hold a banner which reads, ‘Ballyfermot: Becoming our best by doing out best together’. Together, for the moment at least.

BACK upstairs after the game,Kennedy gets talking abouthow backward the Irish system is when it comes to sport. In America, and across large tracts of Europe, it’s seen as a helping hand outstretched to disaffected youth. Here it is seen as little more than high-level entertainment for the better off in society. But there’s a chink of light because for every Brian Cody and Jack O’Connor, for every Giovanni Trapattoni and Declan Kidney, there’s a Gerald Kennedy going unnoticed. And as much entertainment as those four famous names bring, away from the bright lights, he brings much more.

“I love those girls like they are my daughters. I care so much but for some of them, it’s unusual to have someone care. Some of these kids wouldn’t have the luxury of one parent. Yeah, there is a mother or father at home but they aren’t there for them.

“And so I can see these kids are looking forward to their basketball every day. It’s tough out there, man. I remember coaching one of them and she told me, ‘Coach, if it wasn’t for basketball I wouldn’t even come to school’. With those backgrounds, they could follow friends instead of lead. I teach them to lead.”

There’s one story and one girl that’s still at the front of his mind when time could easily have pushed it to the back. Last season, a player in first year moved to Ringsend on the other side of the city, but continued to go to Caritas College because of Kennedy and his basketball team.

At just 12 years of age, she got up at 6am each morning to try and get to class on time. “If she came here five minutes late teachers were writing up. I went to them and said you have to give her a break, it ain’t like she’s not trying. She’s one of these kids talking about basketball saving her life. How can a kid who is 12 say that.

“She hasn’t even lived yet so if she is saying that already, what is her life like? Think about it. Ireland has forgotten about it’s responsibilities to those girls.”

THERE’S another story he tellsabout a game last year against aprivate school in Dublin when they were referred to by an opposition coach as “trash”. He took his girls off the court and reminded them all that despite those bitter words, the opposition lace their shoes just like them, put on their shorts just like them, play the game just like them.

Moments like that were part of the reason he gave up a paid job with a men’s club he was turning around in Swords to give these girls all his time.

“I realised they need me. I take them home with me every night, think about them all the time. I can only teach what I’ve been taught, which is basketball will give you great people skills, great working skills, teach you how to deal with people in different situations and under pressure, leadership qualities too.

“I have it in my bag, recently they came up with a list of 50 different ways to raise money for this team and these are kids that don’t have two pennies to rub together.”

He could tell you about how, during a workout for the Utah Jazz, he did minor damage to his knee and how backward medicine at the time resulted in his cartilage being needlessly shaved away by knife and scalpel, operation after operation. He could tell you about how he lay in that hospital bed and watched the Jazz tear up a contract with more zeroes than he’d ever seen, how he was told he could end up with a permanent limp and how he ended up playing ball here because he thought his surname would fit in. He could even tell you about the miracle shot in the dying embers of the of the 1987-88 season when he holed out from 74 feet to take Neptune passed Killester and to a fourth league title in a row.

Instead, Gerald Kennedy wants to tell you about his girls. And he’s right to, because where once there was a chance of personal fame and fortune, now for every one of his girls there’s simply a chance.