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ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox basketball teams spent 10 days in La Grua, Dominican Republic, building a court - and bonds that will endure far beyond the trip.

In 104-degree heat, ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox basketball players had every reason to collapse during their breaks. Instead, they were giving piggyback rides.

Local children gathered to watch the work, and during rest periods, students hoisted kids onto their backs, running circles around the worksite, laughing despite exhaustion. No one said no.

Athletic Director Adam Puckett watched his students and thought: This is what it looks like to be the hands and feet of Jesus.

The Trip That Combined Two Teams

This past summer, 24 students from the men's and women's basketball teams spent 10 days in La Grua, Dominican Republic, building a regulation basketball court through . It was an unlikely partnership - two teams, two coaches, two different cultures merging for a single mission.

Men's basketball coach Maco Hamilton had done this before. Five years earlier, he'd led a men's team to Panama for a similar project. Hamilton is a founding board member of Courts for Kids, an organization that builds courts by partnering sports teams with economically disadvantaged communities.

When women's basketball coach Lauren Howard mentioned planning her own foreign tour, Hamilton suggested something unconventional: What if both teams went together?

There was hesitation on both sides. Would they get along? Could they play enough competitive games to make it worthwhile? Would combining the groups create more complications than connections?

But Hamilton and Howard took the chance. And 24 students said yes to something bigger than basketball.

How Courts for Kids Works

Courts for Kids operates on partnership, not charity. The model is intentionally collaborative: local communities handle excavation and provide housing and meals. Then they work side by side with visiting teams. Everyone builds together.

For La Grua, a small town outside Puerto Plata in the Dominican Republic, that meant families preparing their school to house 24 American college students, setting up bucket showers in concrete-floored classrooms with tarps for privacy, and feeding dozens of additional people for 10 days.

And it meant showing up every day to work alongside these students in brutal heat, carrying gravel and sand, mixing concrete, building something the community desperately wanted but couldn't do alone.

This wasn't ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox swooping in to save the day. It was La Grua and the ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox basketball players and coaches building something together.

The Work

The days were long and hot. Players rose early and left their makeshift bedrooms - air mattresses arranged in classrooms - and worked 12-hour days in 100 degree temps and 100% humidity. They wore long pants and long sleeves for concrete work, rotating through half-hour shifts to stay hydrated.

Puckett had been nervous going into the trip. Would the students - accustomed to air conditioning, hot showers, and Wi-Fi - handle these conditions?

"I truly didn't hear one complaint one time," Puckett reflects. "I was genuinely amazed. I thought our students might be a little soft. But they never quit. During breaks when they should have been resting and drinking water, they were giving piggyback rides to the local kids who came to watch."

The court was scheduled to take three days to complete. The teams finished in two.

One evening, someone mentioned stopping for dinner. Puckett glanced at his watch, thinking it was 4:30 p.m. It was 8 p.m.

The Basketball

The trip wasn't all construction. Each team played two competitive games against local semi-pro teams, regionally based squads that included athletes of all ages and serious skill.

For the men's team, one game became unforgettable. They were playing on the brightest sport court surface anyone had ever seen - reds, blues, yellows - with rims that weren't quite regulation height. One hoop measured about 9 feet 8 inches. The other was closer to 10 feet 2 inches. Weird conditions. Great basketball.

The Bruins fell behind, then mounted a comeback led by Noah Marte, a ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox student of Dominican heritage who had never visited his father's homeland. Marte hit four three-pointers in a row. The crowd roared. Then he hit a buzzer-beater to tie the game and push it to overtime.

After the game, the entire community rushed the court and embraced him. For the rest of the trip, people stopped him on the street, asking for autographs and pictures. The game had been livestreamed, and somehow, two hours up in the hills, everyone had watched.

For Marte, the trip became an unexpected homecoming - discovering his roots while serving a community that claimed him as their own.

The Alumni Connection

Midway through the trip, the teams connected with two ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox alumni serving as missionaries in the DR: Lane Hadley, a ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox alumnus, and his wife Acarey, who played volleyball for the Bruins. The Hadleys work at a K-12 Christian school up in the hills, and the basketball teams spent a day hosting a Basketball Academy - essentially a camp for all the school's students.

For the ºìÐÓ¶ÌÊÓƵ Fox athletes, seeing the Hadleys was powerful. Watching how God was using them in ministry and seeing the impact they were having in their community. "That was as impactful for our student-athletes as it was for the kids at the school," Puckett reflects.

Mission Accomplished

Hamilton and Howard didn't just combine two teams - they removed every distraction that usually keeps college students from being fully present. Throughout the trip. the students weren't on their cell phones because the coaches took them away, an intentional decision that forced presence, connection, and community.

What emerged over 10 days was profound. "The bonds built between the women's and men's teams is special," Puckett says. "For the next four years at least, these teams are connected in a way we could never have achieved on campus."

When the teams flew home, they left behind a regulation basketball court in La Grua. What they brought back is harder to measure - the kind of bonds that form when you build something together under difficult conditions, when you show up for work and for children who want piggyback rides. Hamilton and Howard took a chance when they combined two teams for one mission. It worked.