Barros going abroad to teach sport, character

BarrosBarrosTomé Barros, a young Cape Verdean man who grew up in three-decker on Sumner Street in Dorchester, loves the game of basketball.

“Even though Tomé is a great player, he seems to always be a student of the game,” says Aderito Andrade, Barros’s cousin. “Recently, he’s been studying [Celtic Rajon] Rondo and Dwayne Wade. He has a nice side step move now. He surprised everyone the first time he used it, and took me off guard—I even fell down.”

Barros, 23, learned how to play basketball at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Dorchester and spent much of his free time there. Club staff selected him to participate in the Keystone Club, a community service organization through which he says he discovered the rewards of helping others. He was also awarded the club’s Youth of the Year Award.

“The Boys and Girls Club was like my second home,” says Barros, as he sits on his front porch. “I stayed off the streets and got involved in community service there. I learned how to play basketball there, which helped make me the person I am today.”

Now, having graduated from Hampton University in the spring, he set off last week on a ten-month sabbatical to bring the joy of basketball to the children of Senegal, Cape Verde, and Brazil.

Building character: When Barros was still in high school, his Boys and Girls Club basketball team barely secured a spot in the league playoffs. Seeded last, he and his teammates unexpectedly defeated the top-ranked team in the semi-finals and progressed to the championship game—which Barros remembers as the game that demonstrated the integrity he had gained playing basketball.

The team had scraped their way into the finals only to play in a game that the referees officiated unfairly. “The refereeing in that game was heinous, but we just kept playing our hardest” says Barros, still frustrated with the referees. “We wanted to give the ref a piece of our minds, but our coach just told us to keep playing.” The Dorchester boys kept their composure and lost by a narrow margin in overtime.

Mike Joyce, who coached this team and many others that Barros played on, says Barros’s leadership on the court played a major role in the team keeping its cool. “When kids are faced with that kind of situation, they’ll give up and make an excuse about the refs for not playing their hardest,” says Joyce. “But they played hard, kept scrapping, and brought the game into overtime. I suspect that if Tomé had given up the rest of the team would have followed—he was like a second coach.”

Combining his passion for basketball and community service, Barros has created B.O.U.N.C.E. Academy, a non-profit through which he aims to use basketball to teach children “important life lessons on and off the court” like what happened with him.

Earlier this year, Barros was awarded $25,000 for his sabbatical through Shooting Touch, a non-profit devoted to improving children’s lives through basketball. He used the grant to create B.O.U.N.C.E., which stands for Basketball Outreach Unifying Neighborhoods and Communities Everywhere, and left last Thursday for Senegal to observe a similar program already established there. Afterwards, he will travel to Brazil and Cape Verde to establish B.O.U.N.C.E. programs.

Barros, who studied business during college, has spent the past few months preparing for his trip, buying basketball equipment as well as learning a little Portuguese and French. “I just want to help out kids around the world by bringing something I love to them,” said Barros. “It would be my dream come true if one of the kids I work with through B.O.U.N.C.E. goes to the NBA after I taught him to play.”

A good role model: A Boston College High School alumnus, Barros says that education has played a key role in his life. Without that, he says, he would not have been able to pursue his passion for basketball and community service.

“I’m not NBA-good at basketball,” Barros says. “But I kept involved with it and went to college. Now I’m going on a ten-month sabbatical for college grads that incorporates ball and service.”

Barros, whose parents emigrated from Cape Verde, says that he is determined to make a “positive contribution” to the world and would like to show the public that most Cape Verdeans are not criminals.
“Tomé is a good role model,” says Celso Ribeiro, another of Barros’s cousins. “A lot of the things people see in the news are a Cape Verdean shooting this person or that person and going to jail for ten years. Tomé has enabled himself to go on a ten month sabbatical.”

Ribeiro and Andrade say that he is a source of great pride in his community. “A lot of little kids follow him around here in the neighborhood, because he made it—he went away to college,” says Ribeiro. “He’s like a superstar or hero in the neighborhood. He’s a natural born leader and a bright kid.”

Regarding his future, Barros hopes to stay involved with community service and basketball as well as continue to travel. “Tomé has a very bright future,” Ribeiro says, adding that he can see him becoming the general manager of the Celtics.

Readers can follow Tomé Barros’s trip through his blog: http://bit.ly/aM0B3F.


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