Immigrant players make Tilden a basketball powerhouse
Brooklyn is literally All-World. “My basketball team was playing at Tilden and we were up by 30 in the fourth quarter,” notes former Tilden High School basketball coach Jeff Schrier. “I emptied the bench. All of a sudden, I realized something and called timeout. The kids came in, sat on the bench, and expected some pearls of wisdom from their coach. Instead, I said, ‘Mark, where are you from?’ Barbados was the answer. I then asked the other four players on the court where they were from. Haiti, St. Lucia, Antigua, and Grenada were the answers. I said, ‘Well, you’re all here at Tilden now so let’s play Tilden basketball.’”
“They returned to the floor and I turned to Sean Peterson, my high scorer who was sitting next to me on the bench and I asked him, ‘Sean, what happened to all the American ball players?’ Without missing a beat, Sean turns to me and says, ‘Don’t ask me, coach. I’m from Jamaica.’”
Schrier also gave us a few interesting facts: