Helping Hoops’ Teuila Reid is fun to be near in the stands, watching basketball.
Teuila’s eyes shine and there is pure enjoyment in her voice as she observes a teenager standing still on the baseline, hands half in pockets, with his eyes glued to a training drill being run by Coach Omar.
“When he first came here,” Teuila says, “he couldn’t look anybody in the eye, he couldn’t stay still, he was a constant threat to make a break for the street, to try to take off. Now he’s happy to be here, he’s engaged, and you can tell he feels safe.”
Moments later, another rangy redhead youth moves down the court, dribbling skilfully, as another youth runs backward, defending.
“That’s Caleb,” Teuila says of the ball carrier. “He’s 19 and he’s a Special Olympics athlete now, in basketball. He’s training to be a coach, so we’re mentoring him in a targeted way. He’ll move into a paid coaching role, hopefully at the start of 2025, thanks to the Newsboys Foundation.”
Caleb, like all the participants in this Helping Hoops ‘Bounce’ session, lives with a neurodiverse condition; in his case, autism.
“Caleb has had so much development and socialisation improvement through basketball,” Teuila said.
“Caleb of 10 years ago was not the Caleb we are seeing today. He has challenges with implementing instructions and in remembering details, such as how to catch public transport, but he has worked so hard and we have as well, with him for that whole time.”
Coach Omar Coles is ex-military out of Cleveland in the USA and carries an air of natural authority.
He became interested in how sport could help people living with disabilities while studying aikido in Montreal.
Too poor to afford classes, Omar paid his way by helping train blind participants, and was struck by “how powerful it was that these students, who were all blind, felt empowered because they were learning to defend themselves,” he said.
“I was asking myself: how can I recreate that, and create a community that feels empowered? Then I moved to Melbourne in 2011, found out about Helping Hoops, made a few phone calls, started in 2012 and here we are, in 2024.”
Teuila and Omar talk about the need for regulations and boundaries, so that the neurodiverse youth on the court can thrive within the accepted parameters of behaviour.
“Helping Hoops gives them confidence,” Omar said.
“Basketball is the vehicle that we use to teach kids teamwork, responsibility. Everybody’s going to grow up and everybody has to be a part of a team – whether a team called Life, or maybe Family. So, what part do they want to play in that?
“We start them off early and along the way we build community. People have a place to come, whether they want to be basketball stars or whether they want to playin the orchestra or be a swim champion. They have a place to come to feel safe and be who they are.”
For the coach, it doesn’t matter if he’s coaching kids from housing commission communities across Helping Hoops’ 14 locations, or these kids “of all abilities” at the Newsboys-powered session in Broadmeadows, his ambition is the same.
“Everyone is enriched with some type of a value and it’s like the opposite of the world we live in,” he said. “Instead of looking out there for the magic, it’s teaching them to take the magic from within and bring it out and share it with the world.”
That’s Omar’s superpower: meeting his charges on their terms, instead of his.
“I found that the thing for me was how to step into these children’s world and see the world from their brain,” he explained. “The way I can lead is not by telling you to step into my world and do what I do. Instead, how do I step into your world and see the beauties that you have and teach you to push that out?
“I have a participant here, when he first came, he would not come near me. He would clap his hands, and he would stay away from me,” Omar said. “Now it’s, like, he gives me high-fives, gives me hugs, and it was just a matter of when he warmed up to me.
“I accepted him, but I had to give him time to accept me, and that can come from his background. I mean, I spend one hour a week with these kids. I don’t know what goes on in their house. I don’t know what goes on in their daily life, but I like to be that one little spark in their life that they look forward to.”
Newsboys Foundation support for the all-abilities program means a diverse group of young people get to push beyond what they thought was possible, on court and beyond.
Teuila, Omar and Helping Hoops’ volunteer coaches are there, every step of the way.
“We’re all human,” Omar said. “It is just we see things from different perspectives, and we have different physical abilities that allow us to go, to do, to perform in specific ways. I love watching the kids grow.”
Nick Place