Basketball league ‘like a safe haven’ in Boynton
BOYNTON BEACH — Retired Boynton Beach police officer Bill Tome is known in the community for creating the Boynton Beach Bulldogs youth football program in the 1990s. And now he’s back helping another generation of young boys with another sports league.
About four months ago, Tome, through The Bill Tome Foundation, started the Stop The Violence Basketball League with his partner, Kent Walker, also a retired city police officer.
The two wanted to provide teens — ages 15 to 18 — who never made a basketball team or spent their free time on the streets possibly getting in trouble with a way to better themselves.
About 60 teens from Boynton and West Palm Beach joined the league, sponsored by Boynton Beach Police and the city’s recreation and parks department, and have spent every Thursday playing basketball at the Ezell Hester Center, which has two new scoreboards recently bought by the Tome foundation. Volunteer police officers and high school teachers coach the players.
Their season will end today with four playoff games starting at 1 p.m. that will lead up to the championship at 5.
The teens will also honor Damas Ilceus, a 21-year-old who volunteered with the league and was shot and killed Feb. 20 outside the Hester Center. He was walking to a basketball court to play with a relative and a friend when Jameslee Terasme, 16, walked up and tried to start a fight with either the relative or the friend, a police report said. The relative told investigators that Ilceus intervened and stopped the fight. Terasme faces charges of first-degree murder with a firearm, possession of a firearm by a minor and being a delinquent in possession of either of a firearm or ammunition.
Ilceus helped in any way he could every Thursday night, Tome said.
“He looked out for the kids, made sure they stayed out of trouble,” he said.
The teens will all sign a basketball and give it to Ilceus’ family.
Ilceus is Boynton’s only homicide this year, but the city has seen a rash of gun violence since January.
Jermarri Horne, a senior at Boynton Beach Community High and a player in the league, said he wanted to join the program after football season ended so he wouldn’t get into trouble spending time on the streets playing cards.
“It was a lot of violence like fighting, shooting, and all that has narrowed down since we had the opportunity to play basketball,” he said. “Once (Tome) opened up the basketball league to the community, it was just like, yes, we all have something to do now, we don’t have to be on the streets. It’s become a family thing.”
Added CJ Thomas, a senior at Boynton High who plays in the league and also fills in as coach: “It’s kind of like a safe haven for us.”