Carleton College Women’s Basketball Team Heads to Thailand for Outreach Trip
The Carleton College women’s basketball team will travel to Thailand, June 12-29, to compete against Thai university teams, conduct basketball clinics and provide humanitarian assistance to villagers in the country’s northern hill tribe communities.
The Carleton College women’s basketball team will travel to
Thailand, June 12-29, to compete against Thai university teams, conduct basketball clinics and provide humanitarian assistance to villagers in the country’s northern hill tribe communities.
According to Head Coach Tammy Metcalf-Filzen, the trip is an opportunity for the players to experience another culture first-hand. “Due to the long basketball season, our players are required to be on campus, and don’t always get the opportunity to go on off-campus studies programs like other Carleton students,” she said. “This is their chance to immerse themselves in a different part of the world and help others at the same time.”
The team will be based in the Karen tribal village of Ban Mai Phatana, where they will befriend young women at the Tribal Girls’ Vocational Training Center. Many women from this region resort to prostitution as a way to earn a living-they lack the education and skills to assist them in avoiding prostitution and the threat of AIDS. The center provides spiritual development, education and vocational skills to tribal females as an alternative to prostitution.
Strangely enough, many of these remote villages are in the process of constructing basketball courts, using money given by the Japanese government. The Thai people, and children in particular, are eager to learn how to play the game. The Carleton players will share their basketball skills by conducting clinics and competing against village teams on dirt courts.
Carleton’s team also will compete against both men’s and women’s teams at Chiang Mai University and Payap University. “The administrators at these schools have stressed that it’s important for our players and the Thai university students to have a chance to become friends,” Metcalf-Filzen said. Plans are underway for the Carleton players to participate in a regional jamboree and basketball tournament near Chiang Mai, as well.
In addition to Metcalf-Filzen, the 12 members of the team will be accompanied by 21 members of their families and two other Carleton coaches, Heidi Jaynes, head volleyball coach, and Donna Ricks, head cross country and track and field coach. The group’s leader is Michael Leming, a sociology professor at nearby St. Olaf College, who also has taught at Chiang Mai University and is working on a book based on ethnographic work he conducted in a Karen village in northern Thailand.
In anticipation of the trip, the Carleton team has been collecting clothes, shoes and athletic equipment, including outdated Carleton uniforms, for distribution in the Thai villages. Along with their family members, they will conduct basic vision screening and provide eyeglasses and personal hygiene products to the villagers. One medical doctor and several nurses are among the players’ family members participating in the trip, and they will assist with more advanced medical needs.
There also will be time for sightseeing, including a visit to the Grand Palace in Bangkok, an elephant and raft trip, and tours of several temples. For more information, contact Tammy Metcalf-Filzen at 507-646-4058 (w) or 612-652-6785 (h).