A Day at the Riyadi vs. Sagesse Game

Thanks to Mac’s planning, we were able to fill two buses full of GAM3 youth. One bus was for the boys, the other for the girls. We met in Qas Qas and caravanned across half the city until we reached the Corniche, where the Riyadi Gym sits just a short walk away from the picturesque lighthouse at the western most point of West Beirut. Faces beamed with excitement, as this was the first professional basketball game for many of the kids.

We got into the stands a little before tip-off and after moving around a bit in an attempt to find enough room for all our guests we eventually settled just behind the cheering section for the Riyadi team. The cheers, accompanied by a middle-eastern style drum, were loud and apparently quite motivating as Riyadi went up 12 to nothing to start off the first quarter against Sagesse. Some of the 15 and 16 year old boys watched from the sidelines until they were asked to move up into the seats while the younger kids sat together, some accompanied by their mothers and fathers.

After Riyadi’s bench fueled rout of Sagesse, the stands emptied back out into the street . . . but we had something else in mind for the kids so we kept them from getting on the buses too soon. We waited for fifteen minutes until we were eventually greeted by two of the team’s stars, Ismail Ahmad (F) and Omar Turk (G), and though they were only able to shake a few hands and visit with us for a few minutes it made the kids day. It was a good feeling to watch the faces of GAM3 youth as they piled back onto the buses, full of excitement.

New B-Ball Courts in the Bourj Al-Baradjne Refugee Camps, Sunday Rain

On Saturday, a few of us went to the Bourj Al-Barajne Palestinian Refugee Camp to watch as Saad Al Jamal, a senior engineer with ACTED (Agency for Technical Cooperation and Development) who has worked on reconstruction efforts in Darfur, Iraq, and southern Lebanon; tested the structural integrity of the roof where GAM3 plans on building basketball courts along with a single football field. The roof itself sits atop a former factory hollowed out two decades ago by a bomb during the civil war, the bottom-most floor now being used as a plastic recycling center.
With support from the governing bodies within the camp, GAM3 hopes to have the first of many basketball courts built in a few months. It will be placed smack in the center of the large space to accommodate spectators on the sidelines, and though the first few steps have been made, there is still much work to be done as everything from worn out shoes to spent shotgun shells find themselves tangled between corrugated steel-bars.

The news of these proposed courts have been spreading quickly through the camp, sparking interest in GAM3’s Qas Qas Sunday basketball practices, and though one resident seemed more interested in football than hoops, asking for only one court to be built alongside many soccer fields, I have a feeling even he will come around eventually.

After a good rain Sunday morning, Mac phoned the coaches and the Palestinians asking them not to come. The downpour leaving only one out of the six courts available while the rest had collected small Rorschach-like puddles leaving most of the playing surface available only for drills, making half-court games a hazard if not nearly impossible. As usual, the girls did their best despite the conditions, and its worth noting, that only a few were absent.

The numbers were low, but it wouldn’t take long for that to change. About halfway through the exercises a group of boys from the Sabra camp, some of whom we haven’t seen since the second meeting, asked to participate in some passing and shooting drills. Due to the lack of coaches this Sunday, a backup was brought in to help with the sudden influx of participants. Harry, the substitute coach worked primarily with the Sabra kids until they decided that they had better things to do. We found them in the adjacent soccer field, kicking the ball high into the air. Hopefully, as word spreads, more kids such as these will come out seeking the warm air and structure of GAM3’s Sunday practices.