Basketball Culture in New Orleans
Title
Basketball Culture in New Orleans
Format
Moving Image
Subject
This is a short video about the growing basketball culture of New Orleans focusing specifically on the growth of the Xavier University Men's Gold Rush team and young, black students.
Description
This video gives an inside scoop of the growth of the basketball culture in New Orleans, Louisiana, especially focusing on the lives of the Xavier Men's Basketball team and students at Xavier University of Louisiana.
Coach Jeffrey Dixon of the Xavier Men's Gold Rush Basketball Team shares his passion and reasoning for coaching at the prestigious HBCU. He highlights on how his love for basketball has reigned true since his young days of playing basketball as a student himself. He tells of how his desire to share his love of basketball has pushed him to be an advocate for the young, prestigious black men he coaches giving young, black men the opportunity to play sports in a collegiate setting.
Coach Michael Thompson also shares his experience of basketball culture in New Orleans and how it has grown since he was a young man. While coaching the men of the Xavier Gold Rush basketball team, he shares his passion for also coaching young black men and college students who, even if they are not a part of the team, have an opportunity to play sports through the intramural program. This way college students who are interested in playing the sports they love can play without having to go to another school and they can continue to be a part of the community they know and love.
Coach Jeffrey Dixon of the Xavier Men's Gold Rush Basketball Team shares his passion and reasoning for coaching at the prestigious HBCU. He highlights on how his love for basketball has reigned true since his young days of playing basketball as a student himself. He tells of how his desire to share his love of basketball has pushed him to be an advocate for the young, prestigious black men he coaches giving young, black men the opportunity to play sports in a collegiate setting.
Coach Michael Thompson also shares his experience of basketball culture in New Orleans and how it has grown since he was a young man. While coaching the men of the Xavier Gold Rush basketball team, he shares his passion for also coaching young black men and college students who, even if they are not a part of the team, have an opportunity to play sports through the intramural program. This way college students who are interested in playing the sports they love can play without having to go to another school and they can continue to be a part of the community they know and love.
Creator
Virgil Davison
Source
My Nola, My Nola via Youtube
Publisher
Mass Communication Department at Xavier University of Louisiana
Date
December 11, 2019
Contributor
Jeffrey Dixon, Michael Thompson
Rights
My Nola, My Story
Relation
My Nola, My Story 2019 Exhibit
Language
English
Type
Video
Identifier
https://youtu.be/R7AHdtXyQa4
Coverage
A Digital Humanities project by Xavier University of Louisiana's Mass Communication department students, led by Dr. Shearon Roberts.
Original Format
Transcription
[Virgil Davison] "The basketball culture in New Orleans, Louisiana is growing. We caught up with Coach Jeffrey Dixon and Coach Michael Thompson to give us an inside scoop on the program at Xavier Louisiana."
[Jeffrey Dixon] "It's amazing coaching at an HBCU in New Orleans culture surrounded by a beautiful city, an old, historic city. There's a lot of talent here. I've been coaching here for 3 years and I'm enjoying it. I've never seen so many prestigious black people before in my life, so it's amazing. It's a culture shock for me to be around so many successful people, amazing alumni, and they always come back and support and show love to us. I try to look for mostly inner-city kids that's been living in New Orleans, so we can bring in a New Orleans crowd to get that same type of feel that we get just from living in the city."
[Virgil Davison] "What made you start coaching?"
{Jeffrey Dixon] "I wanted to coach since I, since I've been playing basketball and that's been forever. Basketball is my passion, it's my love so I wanna be able to teach, coach, and give men like myself, young and black, a chance to play at a collegiate level. I mean I think it's amazing, especially the fact that you can give back. It's like a different way to give back to your community. Being a black school, you create a lot of revenue with the basketball team, and I feel like you can give back instead of going to another school that's predominately white."
{Coach Michael Thompson] Well, in New Orleans, life for me has been great. I mean it's a lovely city, small city with a big city vibe. I've been out of town lived in Houston, Los Angeles, a lot of other big cities, but there's no place like New Orleans, especially, culture and everything, and of course, the food. The basketball culture, personally myself growing up, basketball wasn't a big thing, but now basketball is huge. For the last, past years, I've taught fundamentals at a local YMCA and seeing kids really getting into basketball and the sport have grown tremendously over the years, so the culture, I mean, everywhere you go, every park is packed, every gym is packed. The kids are really into basketball now. Here at Xavier one of the biggest things we have our club sports like, if you see this trophy here. This is from our, one of our clubs, our soccer team. So what our soccer team did, they played a game versus Dillard a few years ago in 2016, so that's some of the things we try to get up and going like club sports and also as well is some of the fitness classes that we do, exercise classes like boot camp, Zumba, Martial Arts, and different things like that. As well, we do some kids who wanna play basketball, who are not good enough to make the team, intramural sports. We have intramural basketball with these guys here. We do intramural baseball, volleyball, different things like that that kind of keep the kids engaged and it helps our retention because the stats say, if kids play intramural sports, they're more likely to stay even if they don't play on a school team, so we try to keep them engaged."
[Jeffrey Dixon] "It's amazing coaching at an HBCU in New Orleans culture surrounded by a beautiful city, an old, historic city. There's a lot of talent here. I've been coaching here for 3 years and I'm enjoying it. I've never seen so many prestigious black people before in my life, so it's amazing. It's a culture shock for me to be around so many successful people, amazing alumni, and they always come back and support and show love to us. I try to look for mostly inner-city kids that's been living in New Orleans, so we can bring in a New Orleans crowd to get that same type of feel that we get just from living in the city."
[Virgil Davison] "What made you start coaching?"
{Jeffrey Dixon] "I wanted to coach since I, since I've been playing basketball and that's been forever. Basketball is my passion, it's my love so I wanna be able to teach, coach, and give men like myself, young and black, a chance to play at a collegiate level. I mean I think it's amazing, especially the fact that you can give back. It's like a different way to give back to your community. Being a black school, you create a lot of revenue with the basketball team, and I feel like you can give back instead of going to another school that's predominately white."
{Coach Michael Thompson] Well, in New Orleans, life for me has been great. I mean it's a lovely city, small city with a big city vibe. I've been out of town lived in Houston, Los Angeles, a lot of other big cities, but there's no place like New Orleans, especially, culture and everything, and of course, the food. The basketball culture, personally myself growing up, basketball wasn't a big thing, but now basketball is huge. For the last, past years, I've taught fundamentals at a local YMCA and seeing kids really getting into basketball and the sport have grown tremendously over the years, so the culture, I mean, everywhere you go, every park is packed, every gym is packed. The kids are really into basketball now. Here at Xavier one of the biggest things we have our club sports like, if you see this trophy here. This is from our, one of our clubs, our soccer team. So what our soccer team did, they played a game versus Dillard a few years ago in 2016, so that's some of the things we try to get up and going like club sports and also as well is some of the fitness classes that we do, exercise classes like boot camp, Zumba, Martial Arts, and different things like that. As well, we do some kids who wanna play basketball, who are not good enough to make the team, intramural sports. We have intramural basketball with these guys here. We do intramural baseball, volleyball, different things like that that kind of keep the kids engaged and it helps our retention because the stats say, if kids play intramural sports, they're more likely to stay even if they don't play on a school team, so we try to keep them engaged."
Duration
3 minutes 1 second
Compression
MPEG-4
Producer
Virgil Davison
Director
Virgil Davison
Files
