Refugees Excel On Court
Gorjok Gak, who is just over two meters tall. “You have something to do, always.”
“The relationship with Mayor is really superstrong,” he adds. “I look at him, like, as another father for me.”
The challenge for the Pride now is how to preserve that fatherly mission while managing international interest and all the pressures that come with it.
Other coaches and teams in Australia already treat the Pride as a feeder, recruiting the best players, sometimes pushing them to prioritize tournaments that conflict with school or Pride training.
Mr. Chagai has a hard time keeping up with all the calls and emails from coaches all over the world, and in previous years some players, who were seized upon by dubious American scouts, ended up at schools that were little more than athletic factories. About a dozen of the players have come back to Australia after dropping out.
With Henry Makeny in particular, Mr. Chagai, a volunteer trying to manage a program for nearly 200 boys, is working hard to find a better way. He’s known the Makeny family since they all lived together in a Kenyan refugee camp. Henry has offers from five American high schools, and a couple of weeks ago a college coach showed up for practice here and quickly made him an offer.
“It’s a lot of pressure, to contain this, to do the research,” Mr. Chagai says.
Mr. Chagai left home and his parents at age 7, he said, guided by a cousin who wanted him to get an education. One of thousands of Lost Boys forced to flee as a civil war engulfed South Sudan in the early ‘90s, he trekked first to Ethio- pia; then, when war invaded again, he walked for three months to the sprawling Kakuma camp in Kenya.
There, as a gangly 9-year- old, he found basketball through an American Baptist church that had set up a court. It became the place where a young Mayor developed discipline and made friends. He often shares this experience with boys who are missing practices, ignoring homework or getting into fights. He says, “The first thing you have to appreci- ate is that you’re alive.”
He tells them they must become survivors — on the court and off.
“Sport will always be the best thing in my life,” he says. “It’s brought me brothers. It’s brought me fathers.”
Mr. Chagai turned to basketball just a few weeks after arriving in Blacktown, a diverse suburb of Sydney (with a large Aboriginal population), having found a half- dozen other South Sudanese refugees who were familiar with the game from their own refugee camp experiences. They made their way to the Blacktown Police Citizens Youth Club because it was nearby and cheap: just two dollars to enter.
The boys who Mr. Chagai coaches tend to express a mix of emotions about living in Australia. Some have made more Australian friends than others. All are frustrated by stereotypes, and many of them wonder if they can ever be considered fully Australian even though they are citizens. For many, this is the only country they know.
Henry said he knows what he will say in America,“I’ll tell them I come from Australia but I’m South Sudanese.”
Last year, after getting married, Mr. Chagai tried to quit the Pride and pass it on to someone else. He ended with a compromise: He took a break. He visited South Sudan for three months and returned recently.
Now, after leaving his job at a local refugee resettlement office to make the trip, he’s trying to see if there’s a way for him to work with the Pride full-time.
An advisory board is trying to find the money.
In the meantime, the coaching continues. And Henry Makeny says he’s prepared to play the best basketball of his young life, far away from home.
A youth club with players who draw global attention.