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Siegel's basketball players visited the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor during a 2009 Christmas tournament in Hawaii.
The Stars flew to the Bahamas to play in a Thanksgiving tournament after going to Hawaii for a Christmas tournament in 2009.
“We’re probably not going to ever go anywhere where it’s cold, that’s for sure,” Siegel Coach Ben Dotson said. “For the Bahamas trip, we had three guys that had never seen the ocean, two guys didn’t know how to swim and four guys had never been on an airplane before. They learned about passports and how to go through customs.”
Siegel (16-2) went 3-1 to win the Tabernacle Baptist Academy Tournament in the Bahamas as 6-foot-9 Stephen Hurt averaged 18 points and 12 rebounds to win the MVP award.
“We let the kids hit the beach and we did the glass-bottom (boat) look-at-the-fish trip,” Dotson said. “The water was like bath water. It was awesome. Down there it was like 75 to 85 degrees every day. It was 35 here when we left.”
The season before, injury-ravaged Siegel took third at the Punahou (Hawaii) Holiday Classic that was held at President Barack Obama’s alma mater.
“The best thing we did was take the kids to Pearl Harbor,” Dotson said. “That was the big highlight of the trip. The last full night we were there we took a catamaran boat (ride) with cultural dinner and dancing, and we basically toured the island.”
Dotson loves the idea of his players getting to see things that might not ever experience otherwise.
“These trips are not always about basketball,” Dotson said. “This is something they’ll always be talking about.”
Dotson said fund-raising for the trips takes a lot of time, but it’s always worth it once the team arrives at its destination. He plans to take the team on similar trips in the future.
“We’ve been invited back to the Bahamas and we’ve been invited to one in Arizona,” Dotson said. “I won’t really start looking until March, but we’re going somewhere nice, I can tell you that. When I was at MTSU, we went to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I might take them there. Maybe not next year, but the following year, for sure. We’ve been invited back to Hawaii.”
