Why kids in Northern Ireland jump the chasm and learn basketball for life
Violent sectarian conflicts have divided Northern Ireland for years, but there is a new generation of young people united in their struggle for a better, more inclusive future.
hen a fake bomb alert disrupted a peace and reconciliation rally in north Belfast two weeks ago, it became clear just how much a minority of dangerous people still craves the limelight.
This was also the case last week when the PSNI and Gardaí checked trains en route from Belfast to Dublin over fears a device had been left on board.
But such headline-grabbing incidents do not reflect reality, for at the heart of the communities here are young Catholics, Protestants and non-believers learning, working and living together. And it’s the work of this new generation of leaders that gets lost in the noise.
PeacePlayers International, established after the Good Friday Agreement, is one such organization, using sport to promote peace and reconciliation in areas most suffering from persistent sectarianism and division. With sister projects in South Africa, the Middle East, Cyprus and the United States, PeacePlayers is based on the simple but powerful premise that children who play together can learn to live together.
One such leader is 21-year-old Protestant AJ McMinn, who grew up in a loyalist area of the city and now brings people of all faiths together and embraces Irish culture herself.
“I was a Linfield football fan who came with the stereotype of being a loyalist. My life has been all about the parades, supporting Northern Ireland Football Club, growing up in a Protestant area, seeing flags on lamp posts, murals and graffiti, insults and why we don’t like Catholics. I was put in a box like other Protestants,” she said.
“But I didn’t even know what religion was or what it meant. Since then I’ve been able to make up my own mind and even during lockdown I’ve started Camogie and absolutely love it.”
PeacePlayers coach AJ McMinn. Image by Declan Roughan
Each year, AJ PeacePlayers helps bring together more than 1,000 Catholic and Protestant children and youth ages nine to 25 for “meaningful contact, interaction and dialogue.”
Young people from different backgrounds are assigned to mixed teams to take part in integrated sports and community relations workshops so that those from different traditions do not compete against each other. Instead, under the tutelage of AJ and the rest of the teams, they compete and learn together.
A core activity is basketball, which AJ says “unites, educates and inspires.”
“In Northern Ireland Protestants play rugby, Catholics play GAA, although I play GAA now. Protestants and Catholics play soccer and when they play soccer they hate each other, while basketball is a brand new sport, an American sport and there are no strings attached.
“It is more high school musicalit’s more positive because we bring together two groups of people who have negative emotions that turn into positive emotions when they pass the basketball to each other.”
For much of her childhood, AJ was advised by family and friends to stay away from the nearby Catholic area for fear of reprisal for being only a Protestant.
“On the twelfth the Catholics came out and threw things at the Protestants, and the Protestants came out and did the same to the Catholics. As for football, I remember asking my daddy why are we singing sectarian stuff when someone on our team is Catholic? I didn’t get it,” she said.
AJ “vividly” recalls getting involved in an argument as Loyalists and Republicans clashed. She was only seven years old.
“The police got out of their cars; Catholics came on one side and Protestants on the other,” she recalls.
“A girl in front of me was hit in the head by a brick. Her mom stood there holding her head with blood in her hands. My father had me on his shoulders and carried me up the street. Mom yelled, ‘Take them off your shoulders, they’ll hurt her too.’ It’s the only violence I can remember, but it made me fear God.”
The work of PeacePlayers means that teachers, parents and other youth, sports and community organizations receive community relations and capacity building training to further their mission of reconciliation and common society.
In many ways Stormont could learn from young leaders like AJ, who is “leading the next generation on the ground.”
Building bridges at PeacePlayers. Image by Declan Roughan
“Stormont needs to be shown for his dinosaur opinions. These politicians must continue to look forward and not back,” she said.
“I think that’s what Stormont does – walk backwards. There’s a lot of “well, I don’t do it because he doesn’t,” but if we all lived our lives like that, we’d be miserable and boring. You cannot build a future by living in the past.”
Another PeacePlayers leader is Rachel Madden, a 22-year-old Catholic from Ardoyne, who said her family “always tried to protect us from everything growing up.”
“But that hasn’t stopped me from hearing things,” she said. “There were things said at school, things said by friends and things about Catholics by Protestants.
“I remember we found out about the flags and I asked Mom what a Protestant flag was and she said, ‘There is no such thing as a Protestant flag, it’s just a flag associated with someone.’
“I grew up hearing all the whispers from people in my class saying I couldn’t do what Protestants do.”
She remembered the first time she met a Protestant – when she was seven.
“I remember talking to the girl about mine [First] community. She said to me, ‘What is communion?’ I said: ‘Here you wear a big costume and you come into a church.’ She was shocked that we had to dress up and dress like a princess and get money. She got a little bit jealous and wondered why she didn’t have any of those,” Rachel said, adding, “I didn’t know there was a hatred between the two sides until I was a lot older.”
As a teenager, she saw a Protestant family “pulled out of their car” and beaten. “I didn’t think it was fair just because they were Protestants,” she said.
Rachel got involved with PeacePlayer because of her love for basketball and the idea of ”teaching critical thinking skills” to other young people.
“It’s amazing to see how they have developed and learned different perspectives and that by the end of the program they don’t see each other as different religions but as people.”
Both Rachel and AJ can come from two different backgrounds but they believe there is more that connects them.
“Rachel and I are the same person,” AJ said. “We had the same childhood, one happened to be Protestant, the other Catholic. Our mantra is: “Be the person you needed when you were younger; Be the coach that little AJ or little Rachel needed to go into the classroom and make a difference, and that place will be very different.’”
https://www.independent.ie/news/why-children-in-northern-ireland-are-jumping-across-the-divide-and-getting-life-lessons-in-basketball-41515529.html Why kids in Northern Ireland jump the chasm and learn basketball for life