The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

EVERY year around this time, thousands of Bahamian students leave high school and they start looking at the possibility of where they will continue their education at the collegiate level in the US and Canada.

On Thursday night, starting at 6:30pm in the Golden Gates Native Baptist Church, Dr Simeon Hinsey will conduct a free college information session where he will outline to parents, coaches and students the requirements needed to get prepared for college through athletics.

Hinsey, who left the Bahamas at the age of 15 to pursue his education, will attempt to answer the following questions and more:

How do I acquire an athletic scholarship? What do I need to be doing in order to get college coaches to recognise me? What is the NCAA eligibility centre? What is the NAIA eligibility centre? How do I sign up for those things? What is the links between academics and athletics? Is it important that I do well in school?

“If you do get an athletic scholarship, what does the life of a student-athlete look like,” he said. “So I will be talking to them about all of those stuff and just try to provide this information so that I don’t get a call from somebody when their child is a freshman or sophomore at COB asking ‘how can you help my son or daughter.’

“I might have to say ‘I’m sorry, but it’s a little bit too late.’ That’s the purpose of it, but it’s also for me to start to get back into the community so that they can know who I am and to know that they have a Bahamian out there who made it and wants to give back to this country.”

Hinsey will be participating in the clinic with host Bahamian entrepreneur Monique Hinsey, who is his sister-in-law.

Hinsey made the transition from playing basketball at Fayetteville Christian School in Fayetteville, Arkansas to coaching the women’s basketball team at John Brown University. He said he wants to encourage everybody that if he can do it, they can do it too.

“I feel like in order to be successful in life, you have to be able to serve people and help them become successful,” he said. “If you can do that, you will be successful yourself.”

The college info will also be the introduction to Hinsey’s newly formed International Youth Education & Sports Foundation, Inc. (iYES Foundation).

“My wife actually came up with the name,” said Hinsey of Stephanie, whom he met in college and produced two boys - Sammy, 8 and Seth, 4 - from their union. “We want to play off the whole idea of the iphone.

“This generation is the I generation. Everything is I this and I that. So we thought it would be a cool way to play off that, but it incorporates the entire world. I just decided that we have to do this.”

Hinsey, son of Rev Alonzo and Jessie Hinsey, said he intends to fully launch the foundation in August. Its goal, according to him, is to help as many Bahamians as possible to get into colleges and universities in the US.

Monique Hinsey, founder of Global College Access and Mission: College Bound, which was instrumental in securing more than $16 million in scholarships for Bahamian students, said she’s excited about what’s going to take place. “We have a team from Texas Southern who called and said they see what we’re doing and we will be in town, so we will come,” she said. “They are going to be in the house as well and they will be doing some recruiting.”

Texas Southern, according to Hinsey, already has an agreement with the Ministry of Education where they provide a number of scholarships to deserving Bahamians.

Additionally, Central State freshman Iesha Lockhart, who is maintaining a 4.0 grade point average, will be delivering an address on the “Life of a Student Athlete.”

Having watched Simeon Hinsey’s development over the years, Monique Hinsey said she reached out to him to come home and assist in the camp so that they can get more student athletes off to school.