North Dakota Coaches Go Barefoot For Charity

The Associated Press

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/basketball/ncaa/wires/12/07/2060.ap.bkc.samaritan.s.feet.1st.ld.writethru.1014/

More than 25 years ago, a missionary in Nigeria gave a 9-year-old boy his first pair of shoes and told him to dream big. For Emmanuel “Manny” Ohonme, that translated into a love for playing basketball, an athletics scholarship to a North Dakota college and 5 million shoes for poor children.

Ohonme founded Samaritan’s Feet, a charity that, with the help of thousands of barefooted basketball coaches, has given children around the world the same ticket to a better life he received from the man known only as Dave From Wisconsin.

It’s homecoming week for Ohonme, who received undergraduate and graduate degrees in the Fargo area and met his wife at Lake Region State College in Devils Lake. He traveled from his home in Charlotte, N.C., for this weekend’s college basketball rivalry game, in which North Dakota State coach Saul Phillips and University of North Dakota coach Brian Jones plan to roam the sidelines sans shoes.

“My break was given to me here. My education was given to me here. The opportunity I have today was given to me here, ” Ohonme said.

Ohonme, 42, is a native of Lagos, Nigeria, where he grew up in a two-bedroom cinder-block house shared by 13 family members. Families in his neighborhood lived on less than $1 a day. Children would pray for zero-zero-one, which meant, “I don’t have breakfast or lunch, but at least give me supper to make it to the next day, ” Ohonme said.

North Dakota Coaches Go Barefoot For Charity

The Associated Press

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/basketball/ncaa/wires/12/07/2060.ap.bkc.samaritan.s.feet.1st.ld.writethru.1014/

More than 25 years ago, a missionary in Nigeria gave a 9-year-old boy his first pair of shoes and told him to dream big. For Emmanuel Manny” Ohonme, that translated into a love for playing basketball, an athletics scholarship to a North Dakota college and 5 million shoes for poor children.

Ohonme founded Samaritan’s Feet, a charity that, with the help of thousands of barefooted basketball coaches, has given children around the world the same ticket to a better life he received from the man known only as Dave From Wisconsin.

It’s homecoming week for Ohonme, who received undergraduate and graduate degrees in the Fargo area and met his wife at Lake Region State College in Devils Lake. He traveled from his home in Charlotte, N.C., for this weekend’s college basketball rivalry game, in which North Dakota State coach Saul Phillips and University of North Dakota coach Brian Jones plan to roam the sidelines sans shoes.

“My break was given to me here. My education was given to me here. The opportunity I have today was given to me here, ” Ohonme said.

Ohonme, 42, is a native of Lagos, Nigeria, where he grew up in a two-bedroom cinder-block house shared by 13 family members. Families in his neighborhood lived on less than $1 a day. Children would pray for zero-zero-one, which meant, “I don’t have breakfast or lunch, but at least give me supper to make it to the next day, ” Ohonme said.