CLEVELAND — Local collegiate and professional basketball coaches from across Northeast Ohio made a trip to the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center Saturday afternoon—looking to spread the love of the game while giving the youth there a second shot.
A group of young people at the detention center gathered in the gym Saturday afternoon, preparing to go through exercises and drills before participating in a pick-up game. But on-court skills was just one small goal for the children—the bigger picture was to recreate their foundation.
Marty Eggleston, head coach at Lorain County Community College, was one of the coaches that attended the event at the detention center. His hope for the day was to use the fundamentals of basketball to help the children find positive avenues moving forward.
"Basketball is a vehicle and not the destination," Eggleston said. "They can move forward, they can grow, they can develop, they can understand who they are—and once they begin to understand who they are, they’ll be able to move in a successful way."
Before practice was underway, the children sat and listened to local coaches tell their stories and give them advice, aiming to change their mindsets before their eventual releases from the facility.
"What do you want to do in life? Some of you guys have a second chance, this is your second chance. Now what are you going to do after this?" the children heard from one coach.
Ian Cunningham runs the House 1 activities for the detention center. He is passionate about events like the one Saturday because he says they truly do impact the youth that are there.
Many of the children under his guidance, Cunningham said, have been exposed to difficult things and haven't always had positive influences around them. Having strong leaders like local coaches come in and not only teach them about the game, but help them with life advice and guidance, can help reshape their outlook.
"We’ve got so many talented young men here and women that society kind of looks down upon," Cunningham said. "We need to push them towards the positive and let them know we all make mistakes in life. We can change. We can change our direction in life. We can go left or we can go right and a lot of these kids want to go right."
The program Saturday was one of many that the Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center hosts to try to provide a positive impact on the youth there, one that Cunningham believes will truly make change.
"It's about community living, it's about community growth, it's about coming together and teaching. We all have made mistakes in life. How do we improve our mistakes and become better people? And I'm telling you right now, today is a very successful day in Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center history and we're making changes."
The Cuyahoga County Juvenile Detention Center is hopeful more volunteers like the local coaches will follow suit and participate in programs in the future.
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