inFlux 2005

story_Josh Lintereur
photography_Alex Pajunas

When fourteen-year-old Joe Coelho tried out for the high school basketball team in 1970, he grabbed a ball and earnestly raced down the court. During his fevered sprint, the ball never touched the ground. The coaches and players erupted in laughter, and the boy stood humiliated. Dribbling was foreign to the Portuguese-born Coelho, as was the game of basketball. The experience worsened when he made the team but only played in the final thirty seconds of meaningless games. Heartbroken by not getting to participate, he regularly dribbled a basketball twenty miles back and forth from his home in Eugene, Oregon, to the neighboring town of Elmira. The other kids had learned to dribble years ago. Coelho merely needed to catch up.

More than thirty-four years later, Coelho, forty-nine, still dribbles a basketball down long stretches of his neighborhood bike path but shares the company of a swarm of young boys and girls who participate in his Eugene-based Royal Basketball Academy (RBA). He is the founder and director of this growing year-round youth basketball program that emphasizes empathy, respect, and sportsmanship over athletic prowess. The academy overflows with Coelho’s fanatic passion and exceptional idealism. Though the RBA attracts the praise of college coaches and its enrollment swells, Coelho won’t allow it to become an exclusive, high-priced basketball program. Instead, his focus remains unchanged — to give kids an opportunity to just play basketball. And Coelho appreciates what that opportunity means to a child like few others can.

Coelho was born on Terceira Island, a Portuguese island in the Azores Archipelago, located in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean. His family lived in a small home without indoor plumbing where he remembers digging holes in the living room floor to play marbles with his siblings. When he was ten years old, the family moved to Harrisburg, Oregon, and they didn’t speak a word of English. The rural community, in which fewer than a thousand people lived, didn’t offer a language program for immigrants, but Coelho’s fourth-grade teacher selflessly taught the entire family English on her own.

While the family slowly adjusted to American culture, Coelho’s parents grappled with his decision to try out for the local high school basketball team. “We all came from the old country, as everybody calls it. We were raised to work and not to play,” Coelho says. His mother still often puts in a full day of work. “This is the way all of the kids were brought up.”

Without any support from his parents, Coelho arrived at the tryout. Despite his embarrassing display, the coach kept him on the team because of his height and athleticism. Determined to improve, Coelho regularly rose at dawn to practice alone in the high school gym. His motivation stemmed from spending each game on the bench. One minute and forty-six seconds was the longest he played in a single game his first season.

The early morning practice sessions and dribbling marathons paid off. By Coelho’s senior year, he had transformed himself from the worst player on the team to one of the best. Despite his accomplishments, his parents never attended a single practice or game during his four years on the team. After the birth of his own children, he vowed not to do the same.

With plenty of encouragement and support, each of his five children became involved in youth sports, such as soccer and basketball, and Coelho often volunteered as coach. The majority of youth leagues they participated in emphasized the games, with little time for practice and lots of pressure on the kids to win. The competitive nature favored the more talented players, which Coelho found too reminiscent of his experience as a young athlete.

By his mid-forties, after accumulating more than twenty years of experience as a youth sports coach, he began exploring the idea of starting his own basketball academy — where kids would be given the opportunity to constantly practice rather than watch from the bench. He researched other local programs and realized that most kids in his neighborhood would never be able to pay for them. His idea was to launch an affordable basketball academy, that emphasized fundamentals and sportsmanship. He set the price at one dollar per session.

In June 2001, Coelho began setting aside time from his handyman business and opened his academy with a single group of eight kids, two of whom were his own boys. Feeling guilty that his daughter was too young to participate, he quickly opened a separate session for younger boys and girls. The kids couldn’t always make it, and often attendance was thin. He still keeps a picture of an early practice session that shows him with his daughter and one other girl posed in front of a set of empty folding chairs intended for parents to watch from. The photo serves as a reminder of how far he’s come. In three-and-a-half years, the initial group of eight kids has ballooned to more than three hundred.

Some parents drive their children more than an hour just to attend Coelho’s practices, while other players depend on volunteer coaches or friends to drive them. “I can spot those kids a mile away. I love to help all kids, but those that are less fortunate bring back memories of when I was young,” Coelho says. “They don’t have the fancy shoes, the cool basketballs, or hoops in the front yard. They don’t get to attend several summer basketball camps each year.”

Sitting down for a quick break during a recent Saturday practice, Coelho smiles and says he’s tired. Within fifteen seconds he excitedly springs to his feet and sets up a video of a recent middle school basketball game he plans to screen for the kids. The video shows an RBA player offering a hand to a fallen opponent. Coelho, beaming because it was caught on tape, brought a trophy for the player — just one of many acknowledgments presented at each session for players exemplifying good sportsmanship.

The message rubs off. During an intense scrimmage, a girl throws a bad pass to an open teammate and immediately says, “I’m sorry.” The teammate smiles and says, “That’s okay.”

Part of the reason Coelho’s athletes behave so well is because he’s selective. They come by invitation or recommendation but aren’t accepted into the RBA until Coelho feels assured that the players treat others politely, listen to coaches, and work hard. He often relies on the advice of other coaches and players but values the behavior of an athlete’s parents most. “Considerate parents have considerate kids,” he explains.

While attending a recent middle school basketball game, he sat next to an “unruly” parent who incessantly complained about the officiating. When the parent later approached Coelho about enrolling her daughter in the academy, he sensed trouble and talked her out of it. According to Coelho, he can discerningly choose players because he isn’t trying to make money. Without the burden of increasing the RBA’s profits, Coelho feels comfortable turning away kids who may not heed his instruction.

Once he assembles a group of kids, Coelho’s work begins. “What makes his program so unique is his ability to teach children to be disciplined, highly skilled, and aggressive competitors, while simultaneously maintaining a soft-spoken gentleness in his coaching style,” says Mary Holo, whose eight-year-old son, Ty, is an RBA member. “He’ll never say you did that wrong but instead says, ‘Thank you for reminding me that I need to teach that better.’”

Coelho adjusts his coaching style to each individual, Holo says. He knows every athlete’s name, home situation, personality, and skill level. “It is as though he personally remembers each stage of his own development and recalls what it felt like to be an eight-year-old and is able to relate to them like few adults I have ever met.”

Under Coelho’s guidance, the RBA goes a long way toward reversing the pampering culture of modern sports, in which young athletes are exploited for their talent but grow up woefully unprepared for the real world. “He’s got a dream,” Stacy Lee says, whose two daughters attend the academy. “Yes, he wants them to become great basketball players, but he also wants to see them go on to be great people.” Lee recalls when Coelho decided to have the kids pick up trash on the bike path. The idea, Lee explains, was to teach kids to take care of their community.

“I love to help all kids, but those that are less fortunate bring back memories of when I was young.”

Coelho’s success in developing talented athletes with valuable life skills has several major college athletic coaches taking notice. Ernie Kent, head coach of the University of Oregon men’s basketball team, recently wrote Coelho a letter praising the RBA, as did UO head football coach Mike Bellotti. During the past year, Bev Smith, head coach of the UO women’s basketball team, and Jay John, head coach of the Oregon State University men’s basketball team, both visited RBA practices.

“We talk a lot as coaches about how you should be a good person a lot longer than you should be a good basketball player,” says Smith. What is so special about the RBA, she explains, is that by reinforcing “caring about others and a team attitude,” Coelho does more than just talk about it.

Smith also values Coelho’s emphasis on fundamental skills and participation. During RBA practices, rather than holding scrimmages involving only ten players at once, Coelho focuses on all-inclusive drills emphasizing passing, defense, and footwork. Only parents watch from the bench, and Coelho insists that all players hold a basketball in their hands throughout the practice session.

“A lot of us forget it’s a process to become a good player. We are so focused on the outcome rather than the process,” Smith says. “It is really about the journey,” she says. “Joe understands that.”

“What hooked me was failure and not getting to participate. I want to leave my community better than what it was.”

Coelho feels proud of the recognition, but his focus always remains on doing more for the RBA, which takes up an increasing amount of his time. In addition to accompanying kids while they dribble a basketball down the bike path during the summer, he runs a two-week camp for all of the players every August. Coelho’s year-round nine-hour practice marathons each Saturday make many parents worry he’ll grow tired. When they find out he spends ten to twelve hours a day, seven days a week on RBA matters, they assume he’s exhausted. He dismisses the idea, saying, “When you’re passionate, it energizes you.”

A lot of that passion comes from the letters he gets from players and the teary-eyed parents thanking him for all he’s done for their kids. Holo sees the RBA’s effects firsthand through the transformation of her son, who before joining the academy couldn’t talk to adults, shake their hands, or look them in the eye. After eight months in the academy, Ty now raises his hand in class, volunteers to sing a solo in the choir, and speaks with confidence to adults.

Parents are increasingly grateful for Coelho’s impact on the community, and they continually ask him why he doesn’t charge more money, but Coelho remains ambivalent about turning the RBA into a solvent endeavor. He currently charges each player ten dollars per month, and those who can’t afford that get scholarships. Most of the fee goes toward covering the one thousand dollars per month rental cost for the gym and the prizes he gives away at each practice. Yet, Coelho says, the academy still costs him money out of his own pocket, not to mention the hours it takes away from his handyman business. Coelho realizes that many of the families could easily afford more, and his closest competitors often charge anywhere from $35 to $175 per month.

“I wouldn’t need my handyman business if I charged more,” he says. “I just don’t want anyone to ever think this is about making money.” Knowing he can’t operate in the red forever, he explains that his goal is to raise more money through donations and sponsors rather than increase prices.

Though he recently found several local sponsors to offset the financial burden, Coelho brings two donation jars to each session. The first, no larger than a spaghetti sauce jar, is for the RBA, and the larger one, a replica of a real-size basketball, will be donated to Womenspace, a local shelter for battered women. “I want to teach our kids to give back,” he says.

Chris Nystrom of the Eugene Area Chamber of Commerce found out how much Coelho is giving back when several RBA parents nominated the coach for one of the organization’s Emerald Awards. Nystrom says the chamber received letters from parents emphasizing how Coelho is “changing kids’ lives with selflessness and persistent dedication to the community.” Nystrom also pointed out that the dedication many parents described surpassed Coelho’s duties with the RBA.

“We always say he’s like an angel,” Holo says. This past summer, she approached Coelho about bringing Ty’s best friend, a non-RBA member, to the academy’s summer camp for a day. The boy’s mother had just been diagnosed with cancer and was given a few weeks to live. “I’ll give him the royal treatment,” Coelho told her. Immediately after the boy arrived at the camp, Coelho put his arm around him and introduced him to all of the players. At the end, Coelho took a picture of all the children in attendance and placed the boy front and center. Afterward, he insisted on meeting the boy’s mother to show her the photo and reassure her that her son would always have a family of friends waiting for him.

That group of friends means a lot to Coelho and has become his extended family. Coelho’s own family remains supportive of his work, despite the time he puts into it. His children regularly attend RBA practices each Saturday, along with his wife, who is heavily involved with running the program. But not everyone approves.

“My mom today is seventy-five, and says, ‘Joe, you’re foolish and you’re wasting your time,’” Coelho says. But rejection is something he overcame long ago, and he would like to pass the lesson on. “What hooked me was failure and not getting to participate,” he says. “I want to leave my community better than what it was. It is my passion. If I die today, I die happy.”