The Dominican Republic basketball national team is starting from the ground up and the central point in the United States is Washington Heights.
On Saturday, there were workouts for all ages – and girls – at Gregorio Luperon HS in an attempt to draw and find new talent for the country’s youth teams.
“It’s the heart,” said St. Ray’s coach Oliver Antigua, who coaches the Dominican 19U team, of Washington Heights. “I can have it at St. Raymond’s, but no one knows how to get there. But Luperon in the Heights, everyone knows how to get here.”
Administrators from the Dominican Republic came down to watch potential players for the 12U, 15U and 19U teams compete. There were also college-age players there, like former John F. Kennedy star Carlos DeJesus (Eastern Utah), with hopes of playing on the national team, coached by Kentucky’s John Calipari.
Athletes from as far as Tampa and places like Boston and New Jersey attended. Pedro Pablo Perez, the president of the Dominican Basketball Association in the United States, said the goal is to one day have a camp with players of Dominican descent from all over the U.S.
“We’re trying to find new talent for the different national teams,” Perez said.
Antigua coached the 17U team last summer. That club will now compete in the 19U age group. He has players like Christ the King’s Adonis DeLaRosa, Carlos Galan of Gompers, Lincoln’s Ian Vasquez and Fieldston’s A.J. Santos to go along with nationally ranked Karl Towns of St. Joseph Metuchen (N.J.), Joel Hernandez of Teaneck (N.J.) and Iona-bound Grant Ellis of Hudson Catholic (N.J.). A few of his players live in the Dominican.
Antigua, who guided St. Ray’s to the CHSAA Class AA intersectional title in March, estimates that eight kids on his team will play Division I basketball and “two or three” will one day play up on the big national team. That’s the goal, after all, Antigua said. When NBA guys Francisco Garcia, Charlie Villanueva and Al Horford are done playing, the younger guys on the youth teams will move up and compete at that level.
“The talent level right now is phenomenal,” said Antigua, whose brother Orlando is Calipari’s assistant at Kentucky in addition to the national team.
Baseball, he says, is still king in the Dominican. But in the U.S., especially in New York City, basketball has become huge and the country’s hoops administration wants to tap into that interest.
The same can be said on the girls side, where the Dominican Republic is trying to also build a foothold here. On Saturday, Marshall-bound Jenny Ramirez of Lab Museum United, Manhattan Center’s Janicha Diaz Carrion and Wagner College-bound Jazmine Hamlet of Francis Lewis came down.
“It’s dying a little bit in the community,” said Mother Cabrini girls coach Melissa Solano, who is helping out with the Dominican team on the female side. “We’re trying to get more girls involved in sports again. … We’re so used to seeing, in this sport, representation from African Americans, white Americans. We have very few females to look up to.”
One of those Dominican women to look up to, Solano said, is Murry Bergtraum alum Carmen Guzman, who now plays professionally overseas. Solano was born and raised in Washington Heights and attended Incarnation before playing college ball at Manhattanville.
“It’s in the growing stages,” she said of Dominican girls basketball on the youth level. “There’s more popularity among the males than the females. With the females, the buzz isn’t around as much as it is with the guys.”
She’s hoping to change that and thinks Saturday was a good start.
The Dominican team on the men’s side has never competed in the Olympics, but with this grassroots campaign starting at the youth levels, the hope is that the DR can become a hoops powerhouse.
“We’re organizing,” Antigua said.
