Wilfredo Escobar never believed he would leave the United States–“ever.”
So imagine his surprise when he found himself on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean while he was still a Prosser student. Imagine his surprise when he and eight basketball teammates found themselves in England, inspecting a Lord Mayor’s robes, checking out Shakespeare’s hometown and visiting a school older than their sport.
“They left here as Chicago citizens,” Prosser coach Jeff Bates said Tuesday during a welcome-home reception at the school. “Now they are global citizens.”
That was the idea–to “extend the world,” as Prosser Principal Ken Hunter put it.
This was less about sightseeing than about letting kids see their potential, see what they might achieve if they do, in fact, expand their horizons.
“I saw the other side of life,” Greg Dorsey said, “saw that I could go other places and fit in with other people.”
The weeklong journey stemmed from an exchange of trips over the last few years between educators from Chicago and Birmingham, England, through the Chicago Sister Cities International Program, under the auspices of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs. Birmingham has been one of Chicago’s international Sister Cities since 1993.
English youth basketball works through club rather than interscholastic teams, but Hunter learned a movement is under way to start interscholastic programs.
“They are looking at this as a way to engage kids and make better people,” he said. “I said, `Jeff, we’re taking our team over.'”
The student-athlete exchange became a pilot program under CSCIP, with backing from Chicago Public Schools officials, who helped reschedule two Prosser games. The traveling party was Bates, Assistant Principal Raul Luna, dean of students and athletic director Jerry Reed, seniors Escobar, Dorsey, Durelle Garmon, Brandon Hudson and James Robinson, junior Sidney Merriweather and sophomores Alex Harper, Tyron Hickman and Jarvis Smith.
Players had to apply for the trip, which included submitting an essay. Subpar grades eliminated some athletes from consideration.
The players spent much of their visit in Birmingham, about 120 miles northwest of London. They met Birmingham’s Lord Mayor and traveled to nearby Stratford-upon-Avon, William Shakespeare’s birthplace.
The Falcons also visited with students at two Birmingham schools. At King Edward’s School, they sampled scones with the headmaster of the 455-year-old elite private institution.
At Four Dwellings High School, they found an English version of Prosser, with a diverse racial and ethnic enrollment and many students from low-income homes.
Ela McSorley, a Four Dwellings administrator who helped organize Prosser’s trip, praised the visitors for their manners and enthusiasm, which extended to an informal soccer match Four Dwellings dominated.
“Our school is still buzzing about it,” she said Thursday by phone. “Half the school watched; it was amazing.
“The most important thing is these students got to meet each other and recognize that, despite being thousands of miles apart, they have lots of similarities.”
The Falcons saw plenty of differences as well. They don’t, for instance, see sheep grazing on rolling fields on the West Side, and the subway isn’t called a “tube.”
But about the only things the players didn’t like were British money and food. “Nasty,” Dorsey said of the sausages, though he did like the fish and chips.
“It was something we weren’t used to, let’s put it that way,” added Garmon, more in keeping with the British knack for diplomacy.
The trip, of course, included basketball. Prosser dominated in scrimmages against Matthew Boulton College and a Birmingham club team. It also put on a clinic for about 150 Birmingham kids, who impressed the players with their desire to learn and treated them like celebrities, taking pictures and asking for autographs and e-mail addresses.
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One girl, Escobar said, offered him 40 pounds, or about $80, for his Prosser jersey if he would autograph it first.
“Knowing they look up to us, that means a lot,” he said.
Prosser officials hope to take other groups, athletic and otherwise, overseas, including to Birmingham.
“If it’s through basketball, great, if it’s through debate, great, if it’s through math, terrific. I don’t really care,” Hunter said.
“It’s all a means to an end, and the end is to make the world better and transform kids. I look at this as leveling the playing field for our kids, giving them opportunities.”
McSorley said her school is seeking funds to take students to Chicago for the same reason.
“It’s very important to develop this link because the students we teach don’t have a lot of opportunities, and if we can provide them experiences they don’t normally see, it may raise their aspirations,” she said. “Certainly the young men from Prosser, coming to Birmingham gave them confidence they could do things like that, that if they work hard they can be successful.”
For Garmon, the journey accomplished exactly that.
“It was a big confidence boost,” he said.
“It changed me. It shows a person that you can use your talents to help other people, for others as well as for yourself.”
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