SACCO: It’s not the game, but the charity

SWOOPE

This isn’t about a basketball game. Don’t let the orange flier with a rim, net and, of course, basketball on it fool you.

At 6:30 Saturday night in the R.E. Lee gym, a game between the best boys players the communities of Buffalo Gap and Staunton have to offer is only a sideshow to the big show.

A means, if you will, to the end.

And a dozen kids - six from Swoope and six from Staunton - hope it ends with them in the Bahamas, building schools, homes, churches and other necessities just a stone’s throw from money-spending tourists in a country where poverty is a way of life and not just a tax classification.

It’s about three of those high schoolers - Boone Jones, Emily Cummings and Mary Cummings - talking about what drove them to want to go and help. About the youth mission - St. Paul’s United Methodist Church - that’s giving them the opportunity to help.

Most importantly to them, it’s about their belief in God and, in turn, feeling the need to help. To spread the word.

It’s about Clarese Wilkerson, the adult group leader, not wanting to be quoted.

“I don’t play an important role,” she says, then she turns her head toward Jones and the Cummings cousins. “They do. It’s their work, not my work.”

It’s about Jones and the group “spit-balling ideas,” he says, and coming up with a charity basketball game to help their church’s youth groups get out and help. That costs money, after all.

It’s about having to go through Virginia High School League red tape to make sure the charity game is all on the up and up. It’s about all that red tape forcing them to make up new shirts, call themselves the Best of Swoope and the Best of Staunton and use duct tape to put numbers on their T-shirts that will double as jerseys.

It’s not about who’s coaching the two teams - Jarrett Hatcher and Chris Davis from The Show on ESPN 1240AM. It’s about the anticipation building as July 11 draws near.

It’s about “a neat trip,” Jones says. “I can’t wait.”

It’s about Mary Cummings’ first time in a plane. It’s about selling all those chocolate-peanut-butter-coconut-eggs, ham biscuits and the potato bar at church. It’s about the mixed emotions.

The excitement.

Being nervous.

“No matter where we go, we’re going to have a blast,” Mary Cummings says.

It’s about Jones having a doubleheader in baseball Saturday, then heading to Staunton for the 6:30 p.m. game.

It’s not about how much defense there will be once the ball is tossed into the air.

“I’m guessing it will be a shootout,” Jones says.

It’s about Jones, getting baptized at the age of 8, and realizing that God was No. 1.

“It was the first time I really realized,” he says, never looking up from the table where he’s sitting, “the vastness of God.”

Or it’s about Emily getting to know God at a church retreat. When they celebrated communion and the “really good” sermon asked her to let God into her heart. “And I did,” she says.

“Who wins or loses the game is probably secondary to, you know, how much money we can raise and give back to the community,” Jones says.

It’s no show. No wolf in sheep’s clothing. It’s a group of kids wanting to make a difference and wanting your help.

“Our posters say it’s a basketball game,” Jones says. “But we’re hoping we reach them on a more personal level; that this is what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to help other people.”

You see, it’s not about the game.

It’s about where the game is going to send them and what they’re going to do once they’re there.