British basketball players enjoy Oregon

Daventry Swifts and Coach Pearl leading Pendleton basketball camp

PENDLETON – There are 4,726 miles between Daventry, England, and Pendleton, Oregon. Two weeks ago, five students and one coach made that journey to experience life in the Pacific Northwest.

“We’re from a strange place in England, in the middle of the country. It’s a small town, and it’s fairly insular. People don’t get out much, and we’ve come four-and-a-half- thousand miles,” Steve Pearl said. “It’s been wonderful.”

This year is the third time Pearl has brought a group of students from England to Pendleton to help coach special basketball camps for Pendleton Parks and Recreation, but he has been traveling to the United States for the camps since 2008. The connection started in England when Pearl coached Liam Hughes, now Pendleton Parks and Recreation Director. The two kept in touch, and Pearl has been visiting Hughes and coaching basketball camps in the United States for 15 years.

This week, Pearl is leading basketball camps for Pendleton Parks and Recreation. The British teenagers are his assistants.

“It’s a great opportunity for them to share what they know about basketball but also with learning about other people and so on,” Pearl said. “In that regard, it’s great”

One of the students, 17-year-0ld Leo Butler said he has been most surprised by how different the United States is from England.

“It’s quite crazy,” he said. “It’s not really what I expected, but it’s good. I would definitely come back if I have the chance.”

Multiple students said they have been most surprised by the size and space in the Pacific Northwest.

“I thought it would all be smaller – smaller buildings, smaller school. The amount of space you have here – all the houses are on pieces of land,” 15-year-old Riley Undy said. “Where we live, there isn’t this kind of space.”

That same sense of space carried over into this week’s basketball camps as well. The camps are taking place at Sunridge Middle School.

“With our sports hall – we call it a sports hall and you call it a gym – we have two big (basketball) hoops on each side, but this (gym) is bigger and you have a second gym next door. The facilities are a lot bigger,” Butler said.

The British students arrived in Oregon on July 27th. During the tour, they have toured the Nike Campus in Portland, visited Sahalie and Koosa Falls and camped at Lake Chelan. In Pendleton, the students toured the UAS range, visited the Pendleton Aquatic Center, and visited the Pendleton Underground Tours.

“It’s been really good,” Undy said. “You don’t have to visit the big cities to have a good time in America.”

This weekend, they’ll visit the Umatilla County Fair and Farm-City Pro-Rodeo before returning to England.

“All along I’ve been telling them it’s not a basketball trip, it’s a cultural trip,” Pearl said. “We’re going to see the real America – we’re not going to Disneyland. It’s an opportunity to savor what the country offers in an environment that you can’t book through a travel agent.”

Pearl said he plans on continuing the visits to the United States and would like to stage a tournament in Pendleton in the future.

- Aug 10, 2023