In 2006, Michael Evans returned to Belfast, Northern Ireland with the goal of forming a travel basketball team out of a select group of Catholic and Protestant teenagers. After coaching at two high schools in the city’s segregated public school system, Michael recruited an equal number of players from each side of the divided community. After some time, and not without controversy, these two groups came together as one team, which was later named the Belfast Blazers.
The Blazers practiced as a team at each school once per week, and they traveled throughout the city playing in informal scrimmages against other high school teams. Then, after months of fundraising, the Blazers raised enough money to pay for a team trip to their coach’s hometown in Weston, Connecticut.
During their trip to the United States, the Blazers stayed with host families in Weston, with a Protestant and a Catholic teen in each of five homes. They also toured New York City’s major sites and competed against American basketball teams.
Although it is considerably risky for them, the Belfast Blazers remain friends to this day. To learn more from the players themselves, see our testimonial section.
For three years after the Belfast Blazers’ groundbreaking season, and while FCP was officially forming, the peacemaking and forging of friendships through basketball continued in Belfast. New, fresh faces joined the Belfast Blazers, and FCP introduced its first expansion team, the Belfast Bulldogs, made up of players from St. Colm’s High School and Dunmurry High School.
American coaches Colin Powers (Hastings, NY; Boston College) and TJ Reynolds (Yonkers, NY; Hamilton College) were extremely strong forces in building relationships between these two schools, their administrators and, most importantly, their students.
Both teams visited the United States again in July 2009, spending over a week in the Lebanon Valley, NH area with gracious host families and an overall generous community.
In 2010, Full Court Peace left its Belfast, Northern Ireland program under local control and moved on to promote its mission in Latin America. Additionally, in the interest of doing work domestically, Full Court Peace merged with Basketball Beyond Barriers, a Phoenix-based group, to form a two-part organization, Full Court Peace USA and Full Court Peace International.
Full Court Peace is currently developing a new project. For more information on where we're headed, or how you can get involved, email us.
Michael Evans grew up in Connecticut and attended Hamilton College before moving to Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2005. He will attend Harvard University in September 2010 to pursue a Master’s Degree in Education. Evans travels frequently, speaking publicly about the story of how Full Court Peace International began.
