FOR RELEASE: Monday, February 6, 2006

Bahamian student/athletes find warm reception at Kirtland

ROSCOMMON – There’s more than just the country’s rarest warbler flying between Northern Michigan and the Bahamas these days. Two young ladies from Nassau, New Providence, capital of the Bahamas, have made the trip several times since August and are taking delight in the warm reception they’ve received.

The Bahamians, Evalyn Bain, 19, and Shekira Knowles, 18, began their studies here at Kirtland Community College last fall and during their time here they’ve experienced Northern Michigan weather at its wintry best, as well as snowmobiling, getting lost on their way home from the airport and numerous other adventures, not the least of which is being far from home for the first time and many, many miles from anything Bahamian.

“At one point Evalyn very sadly asked me if any fish boats ever make it to Michigan,” said Jim Enger, Kirtland’s marketing director who has taken it upon himself to arrange a lot of the logistics of the Bahamians’ education and life in Michigan. “I laughed so hard – she misses fresh fish so much.”

Bain traveled home for the Christmas holiday and said before she ever made it into her mother’s house, they stopped at her grandmother’s next door, where a meal of steamed fish, peas and rice, homemade cole slaw, baked macaroni and corn was waiting. She relates the experience in detail and speaks wistfully of the food of her homeland.

It’s no surprise then that she’s the designated cook in the student housing she shares with Knowles and another player from out of state.

“I’m the only chef in the house,” Bain said in her prominent Bahamian accent, shaking her head. “They’d be eating McDonald’s every meal if I weren’t there.”

In fact, Knowles admits that, despite her roommate’s prowess in the kitchen, she is a regular at the fast-food restaurant.

“I can’t cook,” she stated, with no qualifications. “Growing up, the adults cooked. I never learned.

“I miss the fish,” she, too, said sadly.

So just how did these two young Bahamians with their braided hair and an affinity for seafood find their way to Roscommon? Bain and Knowles were recruited to be student-athletes at Kirtland by the college’s athletic director and head women’s basketball coach Teresa Stuck.

The unlikely affiliation began about a year ago when the girls’ high school basketball coach in Nassau, Kent Lightbourn, sent an e-mail to Stuck saying he had some players he thought she might be interested in and would she care to take a look at them.

She would, and she did, in person in April 2005, with the prompting of Enger.

Enger, always on the lookout for marketing potential, immediately saw it in another affiliation with the Bahamas. What could be more natural than trying to further the ties Kirtland already has with the island nation?

“It’s all because of that crazy little bird,” Enger said, referring to the Kirtland’s warbler, the endangered songbird that nests and breeds only in the north central region of Michigan where the college is located, and which spends the winter months on only a few islands in the Bahamas.

“That bird is a natural bridge for us to the Bahamas, and we jumped at the chance to further our ties with the Bahamian people,” Enger said. “The potential for a concerted educational exchange is terrific.”

In fact, Kirtland has a five-year history of partially sponsoring one student from the College of Bahamas each summer to work with the U.S. Forest Service on Kirtland’s warbler management projects out of nearby Mio. It is arranged so the student arrives in mid-May, in time to give a presentation at the annual Kirtland’s Warbler Festival which is hosted at the college the third Saturday of every May.

“They choose a student who has been working on Kirtland’s warbler habitat research in the Bahamas,” Enger explained. “When that student comes to Michigan, he or she gets a feel for all the work that is done to protect the bird on this end.”

In addition to hosting the festival and helping to sponsor the Bahamian student, Kirtland also works to educate elementary school children in the Bahamas about the Kirtland’s warbler by inviting them to enter drawings of the bird in a contest. The winning drawings are made into a calendar that is distributed both in Michigan and the Bahamas each year.

As a result, the kids at all three elementary schools on the island of Eleuthera, where the largest number of wintering Kirtland’s warblers have been found, now know they host the world’s rarest warbler. The Nature Conservancy conducts extensive habitat research there.

Enger said he hopes the exchange of Michiganian and Bahamian students will flow both ways in the future.

But for now, Bain and Knowles are breaking the ice, so to speak, by being the first Bahamian student-athletes to attend Kirtland, and they’ve been finding adventure both on an off the basketball court.

Bain has dived right into winter, having never before experienced the tingle of freezing air on skin. For example, there was the night-snowboarding adventure with teammate Emily Henion, of Frederic, that culminated the next day in Bain’s first snowmobile ride.

“It’s not bad,” she said of the whole winter scene. “I always wondered what it would be like.”

Knowles has been a bit less enthusiastic about the cold and snow than her teammate.

“It seemed nice when we arrived, but who knew it was going to snow forever?” she said with a smile. She’s a bit chagrined that she’ll be packing up to leave the first week of May, just when everyone tells her the weather begins to once again turn warm.

But she is enthusiastic about the people.

“Everybody here is the same as they are at home,” she said, “friendly and nice. The community is different, but nice too. I can adjust to it.”

Oddly enough, it’s the basketball she finds harder to adjust to. Coming from a relatively small high school league, playing against girls she’d faced for years, she’s now pitted against players she’s never seen and has to adjust against each opponent.

And then there are the endless practice sessions.

“The hardest part has been treating basketball as a job,” Knowles said. “It’s basketball six days a week.” The Kirtland Firebirds’ basketball season began in early November and they play, on average, two games a week, about half of them on the road in a district that spans from Alpena to Detroit.

The sport hasn’t interfered with Knowles’ studies, however, as she posted straight As in her fall semester classes.

Stuck maintains a strict academic policy with the college’s athletes, requiring minimum grade point averages and no excuses for not showing up for mandatory study hours.

“If your grades aren’t up, you’re not going to play,” stated Bain about the rules. “With Coach, it’s academics first, basketball second.”

But oh, the basketball.

“I’m so busy running up and down the court, sometimes I don’t have time to think about anything else,” Bain laughed about the daily grind. But she admits her skills have improved, as has her performance on the many timed drills Stuck puts them through.

The girls have stayed in touch with Lightbourn, their high school coach, and others have made sure he knows his protégés are fitting in and making the most of their Northern experience. Having made the special effort to push his girls to succeed, he’s proud of what they’ve accomplished.

“All of the girls back here look up to Evalyn and Shekira and are inspired by their success,” Lightbourn recently wrote in an e-mail to Enger. He also included many thanks for the efforts Enger put into finding sponsors for the girls’ educations.

Enger’s contacts elicited two benefactors, Bill Gannon of Grayling and Pete Treboldi of Troy and Grayling, who have shouldered the bulk of the finances for Bain and Knowles. Their money, along with contributions from Lou and Roberta Black of Bloomfield Hills and Grayling, made the entire adventure possible. They understood what Enger meant when he explained the benefits of having Bain and Knowles attend Kirtland.

“Life is all about opportunities,” Gannon said. “They probably didn’t think they’d ever have the opportunity to get an education and to play basketball at some place like this.

I’m fortunate to have had a lot of luck in my business career and I’m happy to have been able to give them that opportunity.

“I think the girls are wonderful representations of the type of students we’d like to attract to Kirtland,” he continued. “We’re very fortunate to have them here. I’m also just thrilled that Jim (Enger) has taken the lead on this. It probably wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for his foresight. He felt this would be a good thing for Kirtland and the girls, and he called this one right.”

“It’s a great experience for everyone,” Enger said. “The people who stepped up to the plate to make this happen did a wonderful thing.”

Not only have the two Bahamians been given a “life-changing experience,” in Knowles words, but the students and teachers at Kirtland – “the little college in the woods” with an enrollment of around 2,100 – receive a little flavor of the islands every time the girls speak.

“I’ve had a lot of fun kidding with them,” said Jon Thompson who taught both the girls in his fall English class. “It’s been fun to watch them as students and then to go and watch them play basketball. They bring the same energy and enthusiasm to both.”

Sandra Millikin, a part-time Kirtland instructor, said she enjoyed the perspective Bain brought to her Communications class which involved the performance of numerous types of speeches.

For her demonstration speech requirement, Bain concocted a chicken-and-rice dish using a Bahamian spice blend, then served it to the students in the class. Millikin said it went over very well and was appreciated by the students.

“We have so little diversity in this area,” Millikin noted. “Our students really benefit by having this type of exposure to other cultures.”

What she appreciated most was Bain’s work ethic.

“She really worked hard to make everything clear,” Millikin said, referring specifically to Bain’s accent. “She has a real will to try, and to work hard to do what she knows she needs to do.”

Both Bain and Knowles have come to Kirtland with pretty firm ideas about what they want in their futures. Bain has been focusing her sights for years on a career in mortuary science and Knowles would like to enter police work.

Both expressed the desire to pursue their careers in the Bahamas, but seem happy to be experiencing life away from all that sand and sunshine – they’re both grateful to have been given the opportunity.