University of Richmond Basketball Star Cammy Desmond heads for Pacific in Peace Corps
Caption: Richmond forward Cammy Desmond gives 7-year-old Trevon Pettis a lift at the Fairfield Boys and Girls Club. (ALEXA WELCH EDLUND)
Read and comment on this story from the Richmond Times-Dispatch on University of Richmond Basketball Star Cammy Desmond who is heading for the Pacific in the Peace Corps. "I look at it this way," she said. "I've got the rest of my life to work and raise a family. Why not take this opportunity to see another part of the world, learn something about myself and - I hope - do something to help people? I might never have a chance like this again." Read the story at:
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HELPING VERVE UR FORWARD DELIVERS ASSISTS FOR COMMUNITY
BY VIC DORR JR. TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER Feb 11, 2003
Richmond forward Cammy Desmond gives 7-year-old Trevon Pettis a lift at the Fairfield Boys and Girls Club. (ALEXA WELCH EDLUND)
Cammy Desmond plays the wrong position for the University of Richmond women's basketball team. The Spiders' 5-11 senior forward should have been a point guard - because she finds few things in life more satisfying than a straight-from-the-heart assist.
Desmond toils as hard at being a decent human being as she does at being a Division I athlete. She worked this summer as a full-time volunteer at the Fairfield Boys and Girls Club in east Richmond and continues to visit the club whenever her academic and athletic schedules permit. So illuminating and inspiring has been the experience that she enlisted not long ago in the Peace Corps and will depart this summer for a two-year assignment in an underdeveloped Pacific Island community.
"Not a day goes by that I don't think about how fortunate I am," said Desmond, a former basketball standout at James River High School. "I'm attending a beautiful school and getting a great education - and I'm doing it for free. I'm playing a sport I've loved since I was a little girl. I'm comfortable. I'm safe. Sometimes it almost seems like we're living in a protective bubble here" on the UR campus. "It just seems to me that if you're lucky enough to live in circumstances like these, then you've got a definite responsibility to give something back to your school or your community or to those who maybe aren't as fortunate as you are."
Such philosophies aren't hatched overnight. Desmond said her parents, Dan and Kelsey, "were adamant" that each of their four children "get out and volunteer, somewhere, in some fashion. They instilled values that taught us so much about how important it is to live unselfishly; how important it is to share and give of yourself."
Desmond was then, and is now, an apt pupil. Spiders coach Joanne Boyle described her as "unbelievably mature" and "one of the most selfless people I know." Boyle said she asks each member of her team to perform at least one hour of community service a week. "The thing you have to understand about Cammy is: She's been doing this her entire life. She gives a lot more than just one hour a week. If she could, she'd give 10, 12, 15 hours a week."
The Fairfield Center offers a haven for the children and younger teens who inhabit the predominantly black neighborhoods around John F. Kennedy High School. It is difficult to tell who is making the greater impression upon whom. Some of the center's younger children, Desmond said, "don't quite know what to make of me. They don't believe the color of my eyes because they've never seen anyone with blue eyes.
And many of them, the boys, particularly, "think we have nothing in common until they find out that I'm a Division I college basketball player. When I show them that, yes, I can handle the ball and I can shoot, I see a whole new level or respect."
Did someone mention respect? Desmond, 22, says her affection and admiration for the young people with whom she works is immense.
"They're hard to handle, some of them, but that doesn't mean they're not good kids. Some of them are great kids - even though they've already been through more in their lives than someone like me, from a background like mine, can possibly imagine: violence; drugs; a lot of really, really hard and bad stuff."
Until she began visiting the Fairfield Center, Desmond said, "I didn't know, not really, what people were dealing with around the world or down the road or on the other side of town. I'd never really been in a housing project before. I just didn't know what was going on."
Now she knows. "I've seen bullets lying on the ground out there. I've broken up fights. I've seen 6-year-olds walking the streets when I leave at 9 p.m. I've seen things I never thought I'd see anywhere except on television."
Desmond, a member of UR's Jepson School of Leadership Studies, made one thing very clear: When she arrives at the center, she does not do so with the intent of superimposing her standards and values upon anyone. She wants merely "to be their friend, to give the kids someone else they can talk to, to try make them aware of the potential they all carry within themselves. So many of them crave attention so badly - and often the only way they can get it is by doing something negative."
Just as Division I competition seemed the obvious next step after Desmond's career at James River, the Peace Corps seems the obvious next step after her experience at the Fairfield Center. Desmond said she has no qualms about spending two years of her life in isolation and, quite possibly, squalor.
"I look at it this way," she said. "I've got the rest of my life to work and raise a family. Why not take this opportunity to see another part of the world, learn something about myself and - I hope - do something to help people? I might never have a chance like this again."
Contact Vic Dorr Jr. at (804) 649-6442 or vdorr@timesdispatch.com More about Sports and Peace Corps Volunteers
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