Rick Gill, a former Night Hoops Coach from the inaugural season in 1996 (top right photo), has established a branch of Hoop4Hope to Canada. Hoops4Hope is a charity organization, whose main initiative is to fill a large container with used sporting goods and send it to South Africa or Zimbabwe. The shoes, cleats, jerseys, shorts, and balls are distributed to the local youth and the container is turned into a Youth Centre with computers, a youth worker, and they run programs out of the centre. Hoops4Hope has reached out to over 10,000 African youth in over 150 different townships.

Night Hoops is proud to team up with Hoops4Hope. The youth involved in the 2009 Night Hoops season will participate in a pledge-driven Shoot-a-thon, a sporting equipment drive at our Championship Event at Britannia, and a video exchange where Night Hoops youth can send an uplifting message to their counterparts on the other end of the world and the African youth will send one back.

After a very impressive start in Canadian basketball with Seaquam Secondary (1st Team All-Star), Langara College, and UVic, Rick went abroad to continue his dream. He played seasons in Mexico and Australia (another All-Star season). Following those international stops, he played two professional basketball seasons in South Africa, an MVP season with the Victoria Bulls and another season with the Cape Town Eagles. In a conversation with Rick, he recalls that, "When I was in South Africa, I saw the Shanty Towns...the kids had no shoes." As a 23 year old, Rick was involved in running camps for the African kids. That was an experience he could not forget and now that he is older, he wants to continue to help underprivileged children. He also saw "the impact of AIDS and drug trafficking," so Hoops4Hope targets the kids when they are young, around age 6 or 7.
(See more Hoops4Hope news)

With this partnership, we want to instill in our players how lucky we are in Canada and teach them concepts such as "act locally, think globally." To help us accomplish this goal, we've enlisted the help of Deanna Schilling, who is doing a practicum with Night Hoops as part of her Masters program at the Alder School of Professional Psychology. She has developed a "Giving Back" Life Skills Workshop for the Coaches to perform with their players.