28 • THE GRIFFON • Summer 2015
Mentorship on the Hardwood By Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton 108th Training Command (IET) Public Affairs
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Everybody loves basketball. What’s better is that everybody can play basketball! What has long been a staple of communities across the country, no sport has stepped across racial lines and provides a means for diversity the way the hardwood has. On the court, the color of your skin doesn’t matter. On the court what matters is the skill in your body, the power in your mind and the drive in your heart. That’s why when the opportunity to talk to young, impressionable minds presented itself at the 2015 Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association Basketball Tournament held in Charlotte, North Carolina, Feb. 26-28, Soldiers and officers of the Army Reserve took that opportunity and ran with it. “This has been an incredible experience. Coming to the CIAA Tournament is always awesome. But doing it in a role that I love, as a drill sgt., and being able to present the opportunities and benefits of the Army Reserve makes it even better,” said Army Reserve Drill Sgt., Staff Sgt. Brian Johnson,Task Force Marshall, 108th Training Command (IET). Founded in 1912 as the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association, the CIAA consists of historically black colleges and universities on the east coast, from Pennsylvania to North Carolina. With schools such as Johnson C. Smith University and Virginia State University, the conference now dubbed the
Col. Easter Sharpe, Warrior Transition Unit Director, U.S. Army Reserve Command, congratulates Jeffery Booker after awarding him a scholarship worth $50,000 at the Time Warner Cable Arena during the 2015 CIAA Basketball Tournament held annually in Charlotte, N.C. Sharpe was one of a handful of Army Reserve Soldiers on hand at the event to tout the rewards and benefits of military service through the Army Reserve. Photo by Sgt. 1st Class Brian Hamilton, 108th Training Command (IET), Public Affairs
Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association boasts such alums as Ben Wallace, a professional basketball player formerly with the Detroit Pistons, and Greg Toler, a professional football player drafted
by the Arizona Cardinals in 2009. Though its name has changed as well as its membership through the years, the CIAA remains the oldest African-American athletic conference in the United States.
“Where I come from on the West side of Charlotte there were very limited opportunities, especially for African-American males. Being raised by my mother, and without my father in my life,
