Kalie and his family returned to Sierra Leone recently. You may remember Kalie from an earlier story, so we’re very pleased to be able to report on what Kalie has been up to. Now returned to Australia, Kalie and his family took over a large (HUGE) container full of supplies for family back in Sierra Leone, and Kalie took the opportunity to run some Big Bangs camps while there. This is his story.
“I spent most of my holiday in Sierra Leone playing basketball and training a school basketball team. They guys welcomed me well and were ready to learn new things about the game.
On the first week of training I had about 30 plus players showed up and we only had three basketballs to use, also had about 7 girls, it was really difficult to train that many people at once with only that amount of basketballs, we trained six days a week.
Every day we work on ball handling, Defence, fitness, communication and team chemistry for about a month. As time goes on I decided to breakdown the workout in to, fitness on Mondays, defence on Tuesdays, ball handling on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays team Defence and team chemistry and Saturday’s game day, I also gave out Big Bangs basketballs.
The guys were really happy, ninety-nine percent of players said it was their first time they have ever received a basketball. During the rainy season we trained and play under rain, (there are no indoor basketball courts in Sierra Leone, even the National Basketball stadium, is not indoor or have a roof over it and it not even official basketball standard size.) For the one months plus I spent with them, must of them have improve a little bit, their shooting, ball handling, defence, fitness and team work. There is are lot of work to be done but they promised to be around seventy to ninety percent improve in all the area by next time I go to Sierra Leone.
As time goes on, when it start raining I chose one day of the week to just have discussion (question and Answer) about everything, it was good, they asked me lots of questions about basketball, about life, also gave them advice about things in life, staying out of trouble, work, family, communication etc.”
Thank you for being such a great representative of the Big Bangs, Kalie!
