The life of a college basketball star can be a glamorous one. Fan adoration, media demands, Dick Vitale screaming your name at the top of his lungs over and over again.
While that life can be a great one on its own, two Mississippi State players know that the real joy in life is giving to those who have nothing.
Senior center Marcus Campbell and highly touted incoming freshman Charles Rhodes took a trip to the Dominican Republic for a week in early August to play a little basketball, but more importantly, to do humanitarian work in the poverty-stricken country.
The two Bulldogs were two of several Division I NCAA and high school players who were chosen to participate for the SCORE All-Star International Team.
Campbell played with the college team that was composed of players from the SEC, ACC, Mountain West and Big Ten. Rhodes played on the high school team that played before the college team each night. Each team played top Dominican club teams and the week culminated with the college team playing the Dominican National Team.
However, for that week the basketball was secondary to the humanitarian efforts that the players participated in during the week.
The players assisted an orphanage with food and games and also participated in a “Feed
the Village” effort by taking food into a village of Haitian refugees, many of whom were on the brink of starvation.
“When I first heard about the trip, I thought it was just going to be about basketball, but it turned out to be much more than basketball,” Campbell said. “It was sort of like a mini mission trip. It was the best basketball trip I’ve ever been on.”
Rhodes said that the trip really opened his eyes to life in a third-world country.
“Everyone isn’t as fortunate as Americans are,” Rhodes said. “The USA is so blessed but doesn’t even know it. Violence and killings are going around and we don’t even realize what’s going on in other countries. If we would understand what is going on in other countries, the United States would be better.”
The basketball tournament was organized by SCORE International, which is a non-profit ministry based in Chattanooga, Tenn., that leads sports teams to play international teams.
Campbell and Rhodes both played well in their respective divisions. Campbell led the college team with 17.5 points and 12.8 rebounds per game while Rhodes showed what made him such a big recruit.
Rhodes scored 32.3 points and collecting 15.7 rebounds per game.
“I came in kind of nervous because I hadn’t played overseas before,” Rhodes said. “I got a lot of motivation from just representing my country and myself. I was real pumped up for it and just went out there and gave it all I had.”
In the end, however, it wasn’t the basketball that was the main attraction for the players; it was the interaction with the villagers in the Dominican.
“One of the main things that sticks out in my mind was something a little girl told me when we went to the orphanage,” Campbell said. “She had to be about eight years old and she followed me around the whole three hours we were there.”
“She gave me a little bracelet that she had made and told me that I was her best friend in the whole world,” Campbell said. “Some of the guys were crying when we left because it was just so sad. Sometimes in life you think that you’ve got it bad, but these kids have had it worse than bad. But they are the best kids.”