Berrick Jeanlouis - FSW Basketball
“I got introduced to basketball in seventh grade. At the time I was like 5’4”, and I was bad, I was terrible. I’m not gonna lie. I wasn’t doing well in school and I was misbehaving, just trying to be a class clown, trying to be funny and impress my friends. And then I got put on a basketball team and it just turned my life around because it showed me that you need school, you need school to play basketball. And I loved basketball. So I started doing better and getting better grades. And then in eighth grade a big growth spurt, like 5’4” to 6’1”.”
“I met Coach Wallace in eighth grade, and he told me: ‘You can be a great player.’ I just looked at him and started laughing, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t even know if I’m going to make the varsity team in high school!’ I played my freshman year on JV, and then they moved me up to varsity during the playoffs, and I played in a playoff game after playing JV all year. That kind of, right there, told me that I had the potential to do anything and that pushed me as well.”
“Basketball helps me to connect with people because we're just on the court. You don’t see nothing but kids trying to play basketball and trying to get better. That’s the thing about basketball, you’re just trying to put the ball in the hoop, so you automatically connect with the people you’re playing with.”
“Sometimes basketball’s all we’ve got when you come from a bad area. It keeps you out of trouble, it keeps you focused, it blocks everything else out that's violent. So being black and playing basketball is just a way to get away, to be honest. It helps you to do you, it helps you get positive, it takes you many places. To be honest, I never knew I'd be traveling across the country just to play basketball.”
“I hope for peace, I hope for equality, and for racism to end because racism has been going on for so many years. It's just been too long and it needs to stop. We're coming to a different time in the world now and it needs to stop. And black people should be able to walk and not be looked at as a bad person or violent or an animal, we should be looked at as a human.”
“Everybody's coming together and it’s bringing all races together. Everybody’s fighting for the right thing because black lives do matter. All lives do matter for sure, but all lives can’t matter if black lives don’t matter. So, with everybody’s fighting for it, I think it’s great. I can see the future coming together and everything being peaceful.”
