On Friday 16th January 1985 on a very cold, dark wet and snowy wintery evening, the boys of the under 15s Scottish basketball team walked out in front of a reasonable crowd of parents and well-wishers behind a piper playing ‘Scotland the Brave’. We were to pay Ireland in our first ever international.
The game had been transferred from the all new, all singing leisure centre in Dundee as the roof had fall in due to heavy snow, to the old fashioned air raid shelter type leisure centre which had existed before. It was a torrid affair, never more than a few points between the two sets of boys, both simultaneously terrified and dazzled by the experience they were now undertaking all for the first time.
I didn’t start the game but my teammate who played in my position didn’t handle the occasion particularly well and after a very short time I was thrown into the action. This is how, with two seconds left on the clock and down by two points, I found myself in the position at the top of the key outside the three-point line with the ball and the chance for (in my life I guess) immortality. An Irish guard bearing down on me, I set the ball free like I had done 10,000 times before…
I can see this in my mind as clear as I am a spectator in the stand. I understand the memory may have faded or altered but it is one of my most cherished experience, even until this day, and was only made possible by people who gave their time away for free.
Scottish school basketball was at that stage at its Zenith. It was sponsored by Esso the petroleum giant and we even got some of our travel expenses paid when we went to matches (as a result of the upcoming teachers strike it would never be the same again and to play for my country would cost my parents thousands). The coaches were incredible and gave their time for free but all the boys were only there because of the coaches at their schools who had also given their time for free and because of their parents who ferried them around the country for hours and days through trials and training sessions and friendlies and warm up matches to get to the point they were at. The same applied to the Irish boys (and the Welsh and the English that we would play later for that matter)
This story is replicated throughout sport and many other fields in the United Kingdom where the volunteer model provides an altruistic basis for society to function. If you were to take the opportunity to look back at your life, to the main influencing characters, it would be almost certain that they had either given their time to you entirely for free or outside what was supposed to be their contractual working environment. I know that’s the case for me.
David Cameron tried to harvest this phenomenon politically with his ‘big society idea’ but volunteering is not for meddling from politicians or any other organisations for that matter. It is always for the greater good and is always for altruism, never for profit and never for profile. The greatest volunteers are the truest heroes who never obtain the recognition they can or who are able perhaps once in a lifetime to bring someone to greatness through their tutelage or coaching and then revert back to their old ways of hundreds or thousands of other people to give their time for free for the benefit of others.
We are losing this day by day and week by week and month by month as we chase profit and growth and pay rises and materialistic satisfaction over the joy of helping others for the sheer sake of helping others.
It was estimated some time ago that the worldwide value of volunteering is $1.5 trillion per year. To me, and for the experiences I gained as a result of the time and effort and expertise people gave me for nothing, the value was much greater than that….
I missed it by the way. We lost by two. It cleaves my chest to even think about that and almost brings me to tears each time I do but it taught me such a valuable lesson that life is not a movie and not always a happy ending at the tender age of fifteen. To realise this and understand that, despite an enormous amount of hard work, the ‘good guy’ doesn’t always win was one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned.
Hail to the volunteers.
Blog Post Number: 1228
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