For many, basketball is a sport that includes countless hours of practice and lifts. Whether it is the intense workouts or the game-winning shots, basketball is a sport of grit, wit and skill.
This past summer, George Genender ‘23 participated in a basketball program where he rediscovered the true meaning of basketball.
Genender’s experience with the summer program started when he met Chris Dial, the founder of an organization called the Basketball Embassy.
The Basketball Embassy connects people, through camps, institutions or a simple hashtag on social media, the Basketball Embassy connects thousands.
“Their mission is using basketball as a medium for social conversations and character and leadership,” Genender said, “Honestly, they have a lot of St Mark’s-esque values, so we connected there.”
After connecting with Dial, Genender was able to participate in one of the group’s summer camps in Stockholm, Sweden. While in Sweden, Genender was able to connect with people from all over the world while teaching them the game he loved.
“That was the best experience I’ve ever had in my life,” Genender said, “The thing that I found to be the biggest overlap is when you look at athletes across the country and specifically basketball, a lot of the mindset is ‘what can I do for myself?’ In Sweden, it was ‘what can I do for the guy next to me?’”
The camp in Sweden brought people with different backgrounds from different parts of the world together. Genender helped the Basketball Embassy with Boys Group A which included players 15-17 years old.
“You get so many different wavelengths of life and perspectives,” Genender said, “It’s crazy that basketball is the binder of that, but that really is the mission statement for Chris’ organization.”
Although he clocked in and out of work each day, Genender felt that, thanks to the people and experiences he went through, those five days were more than just a job shift.
“I don’t know if it was the timing, the place, or the people, but something just clicked in,” Genender said, “I would say it was spiritual, in the way that you hear this quote all the time: ‘if you love what you do, you don’t work a day in your life.’”
Having played varsity basketball as a student, Genender experienced a similar athletic culture in Sweden. He reminisced about how basketball includes getting to know your teammates and becoming friends with them, not just playing the sport.
“You just don’t get the same feeling like I did in Sweden or at St. Mark’s,” Genender said, “That feeling transcends being on the court because 90 percent of it is the off-the-court.”
For Genender, encouraging and creating community was the real highlight of the camp. It sent him back to what he experienced here.
“On Day 1, you had kids who were rowdy and just excited to be there,” Genender said. “But by Day 5, if someone missed three shots in a row, the guy next to him wasn’t yelling. He was encouraging. It was iron sharpening iron and making each other better.”
Even outside Sweden, Genender’s role in the Basketball Embassy gave him the chance to see how the sport can be used to bring together the community. Earlier in the summer, he worked with the organization in San Antonio where they partnered with groups such as Haven for Hope and Sam’s Ministry.
“At the beginning of summer, I went with them to San Antonio and did some stuff for the community there,” Genender said. “All of that was the lead-up to Sweden, where we joined a fully Swedish staff for a camp with 250 kids from around Stockholm.”
The camp also gave Genender the chance to work closely with coaches across Europe, some from Romania, Sweden and Greece.
He added that both the camp in Sweden and at the school set a high standard on leadership and character, a lesson he first learned in Telos and took overseas.
“I kind of chuckled at how familiar it felt,” Genender said. “The mission statement was almost the same language we used in Telos about character, leadership and representing yourself the right way. It was like seeing those same values play out across the world.”
For Genender, the summer reminded him that basketball is more than a competitive sport. It is a bridge between different cultures around the world, and a classroom where he can teach the values he first learned as a student.
