Greenwood pastor coaches basketball tour in China

By Mike Alexander

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Pastor Dean Bouzeos (Bo-zay-us) of The Gathering Place on Greenwood’s west side has a new appreciation of how the game of basketball is played in China.

He returned home in late June after two weeks in the Beijing area, where he helped coach 10 current and former American college players on a cultural, goodwill tour.

The American team won all eight games.

Beijing, with a population of 17 million, is the capitol of and second largest city in the People’s Republic of China.

“China has been playing basketball for more than a century,” said the former 6-foot-2-inch point guard for Carroll College in Wisconsin. “I saw many kids and adults playing basketball in the parks.”

He added that when Dr. James Naismith hung peach baskets at each end of a gym in 1891 to keep athletes in shape during winter months at Springfield (Mass.) College, he taught students training to be missionaries. Some of them took the bouncy ball concept back to China.

“Our main focus was to build relationships and spread goodwill to the Chinese people and to talk about our faith in Jesus Christ,” he said.

It was the first visit for the 10 players and for Bouzeos. He coached high school basketball in his hometown of Chicago for eight years. Other coaching experiences include four tours in Greece and another in the Soviet Union.

Bouzeos, of Greek heritage, became the executive director a year ago of The Gathering Place Sports and Fitness Center, which is part of the Community Church of Greenwood, 1495 W. Main St.

It is a huge 82,000-square foot athletic facility that houses three basketball courts, a soccer field, free weights and exercise machine area, cardiovascular equipment, a racquetball court, seven-lane track and can seat up to 4,000 spectators.

It’s all part of the church’s mission to build healthy, longer lives for people to know and to follow Jesus Christ, he said.

The sports center was the training site for the ball players before going to China. Players stayed in the homes of church families.

For the Chinese people, the No. 1 basketball hero is Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6-inch All-Pro center who has played seven seasons with the Houston Rockets in the National Basketball Association.

“The Chinese love playing basketball with American teams because they want to learn how to elevate their game,” said Bouzeos, who was a pastor of a church in California for three years before coming to Greenwood. Before that, he worked with the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for 20 years.

“The Chinese players were drilled well, have excellent basketball skills and shoot well.”

He said, however, the Chinese are more mechanical in their moves and don’t demonstrate the same intensity or passion that the Americans displayed.

The tour gave the Americans a chance to visit Chinese coaches and players. “That gave us the opportunity to talk about our faith in Jesus Christ.”

The team visited Tiananmen Square, in the center of Beijing. Thousands of people visit the square daily. This is where the 1989 massacre of protest demonstrators took place.

Many around the world still remember the June 5 photo of the unknown man who alone walked up to advancing Chinese tanks and stopped them in their tracks. The American visitors noted that military presence still exists around the square.

The Americans were treated cordially as they drifted among the street markets bartering with merchants.

“There was some strange-looking foods and a lot of fresh produce,” said the coach, smiling.

There were many bicycle riders, buses and taxis. The northern city also has a subway system to move people.

The Americans also visited the Great Wall, the 4,000-mile, 2,400-year-old barrier built to keep out the Huns and other warring nomads from the north.

“We had a great deal of freedom to move about. China could be a hub of world-wide evangelism for generations to come,” Bouzeos said.

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