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| Basketball player, coach, and believer Jerome Westbrooks with Missionary Todd James. |
There are 20 seconds left, four on the shot clock, and the girl guard is bringing the ball forward on the break. Suddenly she’s confronted with the kind of obstacle you don’t often encounter in Irish schools basketball, a six-foot-six African-American center. The girl pulls up, takes aim, and loops a shot over him. It bounces once on the rim and drops in to put her team five points ahead. It’s a game-clinching basket.
As it falls, the six-foot-six center smiles broadly. His team might be going to lose this one but he’s happy with the girl’s instincts and her ability to execute under pressure. He should be. He’s her coach.
You suspect he doesn’t think much anymore about the journey he’s made—from Chicago to this gym on the Northside of Dublin. Jerome Westbrooks has been around a long time now—23 years to be exact—spreading the gospel of basketball in alien territory, first as a player, then as a coach.
His record as a coach is quite something. Under his tutelage, St. Fintans became the premier side in boys basketball, winning a record three national cups in a row. Starring for the school at different times were the Westbrook brothers, Michael, Isaac, and Aaron, chips off the old block, who all won caps for Ireland at junior level. These days, Michael plays for Colby College in Maine while Aaron is pretty sure to win a scholarship when he finishes his schooldays here (currently he’s shining for Killester in the National League).
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Jerome Westbrooks with Missionary David Howells, and EFM Director Chuch Mylander.
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Isaac, by common consent one of the finest young players ever to emerge from this country, is with Northgate College in Chicago. The wheel has come full circle, to some extent, because Chicago is where Jerome Westbrooks first saw the light of day some 40 odd years ago.
“I was born and raised in Chicago. But I didn’t start playing basketball until I was 13 when we moved to a small rural community fifty miles south of the city. The PE teacher saw me walking through the hall in junior high and asked me if I played basketball. I said, ‘No’ and he said, ‘You do now.’ Joe Roberts was his name. He took a huge amount of time coaching me after each practice, took me to the side, and gave me drills to improve my game.”
Whether he’s talking basketball or faith, Jerome Westbrooks is a born communicator.
Ireland has, he stresses, been good to him and so has basketball. “It’s been gratifying to experience a relationship with my kids doing something we all love. It’s neat that they have a sense of security around me in that part of their lives.”
He is as pleased with how Michael, Isaac, Aaron, and their hoops star sister, Maya, carry themselves off the court as he is about their exploits on it (younger son Eric will no doubt be ripping up the courts before long).
And what fuels this serenity is, funnily enough, the same thing that kept him in Ireland when the basketball boom ended. It’s a subject, which, oddly enough, some sportswriters can feel uneasy about; something we can find it less easy to write about than, say, a sports star’s drinking exploits. You see, Jerome Westbrooks is a man of God. Leave that out and you’re missing what he’s all about.
“In 1988 myself and my wife, Lois, had to make a decision whether to stay or pack it up and start all over again. A huge influence was that we’d found a church home here. We found the Fellowship Bible Church, a small nondenominational church, which is now the Trinity Network.
“We wanted to be part of a church that promoted Kingdom values. It’s part of everything my life revolves around, everything I do as a teacher, a coach, a father, a husband. It is to do with where I am in Christ. It centers around that relationship.”
We talked for a while about the part religion plays in his life before switching back to Killester’s prospects for a league title and the woeful current form of the Chicago Bulls. But, back in town, I’m still thinking about the honest way the man laid out his belief. It was, quite simply, inspirational. Whether he’s talking basketball or faith, Jerome Westbrooks is a born communicator. He gets it across.
-Eamonn Sweeney
Copyright Irish Independent, Dec ‘04, reprinted with permission of the editor.
