Peace Through Basketball

The appeal of sports to young men and women can be dramatic. It can even have enough attraction to bring Catholic and Protestant students in Northern Ireland together. Sports as diplomacy has had many victories and none more inspiring than the one pioneered by Michael Evans. Michael founded the organization Full Court Peace to bring together Catholic and Protestant students in Belfast, Northern Ireland to settle differences, and just shoot some baskets.

Creating a team of both Catholics and Protestants from two different schools, Michael was able to establish a common ground where these young men could work out and discuss their differences, all by learning to be teammates and work together on the court. By reaching out to the younger generation. Full Court Peace has been able to change the perspectives of a number of youth in Northern Ireland by starting integrated basketball teams in Belfast.

Read more about Michael's story in Northern Ireland and what Full Court Peace is doing next. We encourage you to leave comments and start a discussion.

In 2006, I was living in Belfast, Northern Ireland playing semiprofessional basketball, a dream of mine since childhood. Then, I became engulfed by the division - the segregation and the deep hatred - that remains in that city, and decided I'd do something about it. I also decided I'd use the thing I knew best as a tool to make peace in Belfast: basketball.

Basketball is the only sport in Northern Ireland that isn't tied to one religion or the other. So, I started coaching basketball in two different high schools, one Catholic and one Protestant. Once I got a following from about 5 boys from each school, I tried to convince them to join together as one team. Unfortunately, they hated the idea.

So, I started to conduct interviews within the region's most dangerous terror groups: the IRA and the UDA. I asked these men, most of whom were wanted by the law, if what I was trying to do was too much to ask of the kids. Surprisingly, these men encouraged me and told me not to give up. So, I went back to the two groups of boys and I promised them that if they came together to play as one team, I'd bring them to my hometown of Weston, Connecticut together. With the trip on the line, the groups agreed and that following week they came together for their first practice.

For the first month as a team, there wasn't one word exchanged across Protestant and Catholic lines. Then, when the Belfast Blazers won their first game, the floodgates opened and friendships started to form.

By the end of the season, and with a lot of help from the Protestant and Catholic congregations in Weston, Connecticut, I was able to pay for their flights over to the US. Throughout their season in Belfast, every practice and every game meant something more to the boys. They voiced their opinions about each other and apologized for having possessed such hatred.

The trip was wildly successful and created bonds that today, four years later, are still very strong.

And now my nonprofit organization, Full Court Peace, is thriving, having produced 5 other integrated basketball teams in Belfast; it was recently passed off to local control there. I now work in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, a place much in need of peacemaking and diplomacy. I'm forming basketball teams for kids to join as a deterrent to joining a drug gang. I've seen dead bodies and I've seen neighborhoods torn apart, run by cartels. But nothing can stop Full Court Peace. The Belfast Blazers remind me of that everyday.

Here's an interview of me on CNN that I did recently:

http://www.cnn.com/video/?/video/living/2009/01/23/dcl.lapin.ypwr.mike.evans.cnn

~Michael Evans

Posted Thursday, July 15, 2010