Shooting Free Throws to Building Fences: Cooper Ainge speaks to BB&N students about community service

While walking down a Chilean street, missionary Cooper Ainge was intercepted by a lady who needed help constructing a fence, so her pitbull dog had a place to run around. Ainge and a fellow missionary immediately started building the fence, and after spending the whole day working on it, they entered the lady’s house to notify her that the dog could roam around the fenced area. Seconds later, the dog ran out of the house and leaped over the six-foot-tall fence.

“It was basically a waste of the entire day,” Ainge said. “We had to spend the next day building [the fence] even higher. I didn’t know how athletic pit bulls were.”

Ainge shared this anecdote to BB&N students in Sports and Society Club’s first meeting on November 18 when his father—Boston Celtics General Manager Danny Ainge—was presumably preparing for the NBA Draft. The club aims to have current and former athletes speak to students about different ways people can use sports to help civic society, club president Saahil Raina ’21 said. Cooper Ainge volunteered to speak to club members about the role of sports and community service in his life.

Growing up as the son of an NBA basketball player, sports were certain to become a significant part of his life, Ainge said.

“It was kind of a requirement to play sports. I pretty much played every sport growing up. I watched every Red Sox game, every Celtics game, every Patriots game.”

Though Ainge played various sports at first, he settled on playing basketball from a young age. In middle school, Ainge realized that he wanted to become a Division I basketball player.

“I dedicated almost every day to achieve that goal,” Ainge said. “It was pretty much all I cared about.”

When Ainge grew older, he received an offer to play basketball at Brigham Young University (BYU) before his senior year, where his father and older brother played college basketball. Ainge relished the moments as a BYU basketball player when his team walked into the Marriot Center––the BYU basketball stadium––with a sold-out crowd all dressed in the school’s colors. For the rest of the year on the basketball team, Ainge continued to have these thrilling experiences until he decided to take on a new challenge: a two-year religious mission.

For missions at BYU, the university deploys students to all parts of the world to participate in community service projects. Students typically take two years off from school and, in Ainge’s case, basketball. Though taking time off from school and leaving the basketball team for two years was superficially daunting, Ainge said, going on a mission trip was quite normal in his community. Many of the people at his church also participated in a mission trip, and his two older brothers went on various missions to places such as the Dominican Republic and Ghana.

“The decision was a bit hard for me just because I was a year into college, and two years off isn’t necessarily great in a basketball sense, but having two brothers have great experiences [on their missions] helped make the decision easier,” Ainge said.

Ainge was assigned to Chile. He took some Spanish classes in high school, but he was far from proficient in the language. After a month of learning the basics of the Spanish language, he traveled to the country to serve its communities.

Each day, Ainge woke up at 8 AM, headed over to an hour of language study, and then worked in a community until 8 PM. Missionaries carried out projects such as doing yard work or teaching English. Since he had a basketball background, Ainge sometimes hosted clinics to teach the kids in these communities how to play basketball. However, as Cooper was learning a foreign language, he was also becoming a part of a new culture. Soccer is the dominant sport in Chile, but Cooper found that in some communities there were kids passionate about basketball.

Ainge explained that from this trip, he learned that he needed to impact society in ways other than sports.

“Focusing on sports is great, and it got me to achieve my goal of playing college basketball, but the goal is to be great at everything: be a great student, be a great friend, be a great member of society.”

Coming from a fortunate place like Wellesley, he learned how people outside of his social background, like the people in Chile, live.

“I think I met four families [total] that owned a car to give you perspective.”

Throughout the talk, Ainge encouraged BB&N students who come from privileged backgrounds to serve communities.

“You don’t need to go to Chile to help others,” Ainge said. “We can always take a few hours off playing Warzone or Fortnite to go work at a food bank, donate your old stuff to kids in need, or help a community in any way you want.”