From Greece to Costa Rica, Rick Walrond coaches basketball

Rick Walrond sat in a luxurious hotel room in Kos, Greece, and started recounting his schedule.

Coaches’ meeting at 10 a.m. Workouts until 2:30 p.m. Dinner at a local restaurant in the evening.

“I’ve been yelling too much,” he said late last Friday afternoon. “My voice is getting raspy.”

Walrond, a Volusia County resident and former assistant basketball coach at Stetson and Bethune-Cookman, has worked as a physical education teacher for the last 15 years. This past school year, he served at R.J. Longstreet Elementary School. He does real estate on the side.

But three or four times a year, he flies overseas to coach at basketball camps. Last week, it was Greece. This week, it’s Prague, Czech Republic. He had never been to either place before this trip, checking them off as the 17th and 18th countries he’s visited because of basketball.

“I’ve been so fortunate to be able to do this stuff,” he said. “The relationships I’ve forged over the years, learning from people from different cultures and everything. It’s been truly amazing.”

Relationships. Those are what he chalks all of these experiences up to.

Walrond has coached high school, college and professional ball

Walrond hasn’t coached for a team for more than 15 years. He has received multiple offers to go back as a college assistant but hasn’t accepted any. He’s lived that life before, and it would interfere with what he’s doing now.

In the United States, he coached at the high school and college levels. He played professionally in Sweden, then coached there and in China.

In the late 1980s, Walrond became the head coach at the University of South Carolina Salkehatchie and remained there for eight years before the program was shuttered. He latched on with Stetson in 1996 and signed with B-CU two years later, staying until 2003.

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He also runs his own institution, Fundamental Basketball Academy, tutoring local players.

Through all those avenues, Walrond made connections. Some overseas, some in America. The more he traveled, the more people he met.

He befriended legendary Hatters coach Glenn Wilkes while working at Stetson in the 1990s. Wilkes got Walrond involved with the Michael Jordan Flight School and Kobe (Bryant) Academy camps in California.

Walrond posted photos with both hoops icons on his website. Last week in Greece, some of the camp’s 90 attendees came up to him, showed him those pictures and asked about them. Most of the participants range in age from 8-18.

“One thing I’ve found is that people are people — regardless of your political views, your views on life, anything like that,” Walrond said. “I think people are a whole lot more common than we are different. That’s the way I’ve always looked at it.”

Walrond: Basketball is a universal language

He began assisting at the international camps after a brief stint coaching in the Chinese Basketball Association in the mid-2000s. Since then, he’s hopped to Lithuania, Costa Rica, Italy, Morocco and many other spots. His connections invite him.

Typically, Walrond goes by himself.

Last summer, his wife, Helena, who teaches at B-CU, went with him to Italy. She has family there and speaks the language.

But that was an outlier. This summer, Walrond is by himself again. He left the U.S. last Monday and will return to Florida around July 20.

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In some countries, like China, he’s used a translator. The people in the majority of the places he’s been, like Greece, know English, though. He says basketball is a universal language, anyway.

Of course, he spends the camps preaching about the on-court fundamentals, but that isn’t his top focus.

“The No. 1 thing is — and I do this with all my camps — I want it to be fun,” Walrond said. “I want them to laugh. I say all these funny one-liners. I want it to be fun, because if it’s not fun, they’re not coming back … I want them to enjoy basketball, and I want them to work to get better …

“It’s not just basketball. It’s life. I’m trying to teach them about life, as well. If you don’t work at something, you’re not going to get better at it.”

Walrond's potential next trip?

Walrond has been to several places multiple times — Costa Rica, Italy, Finland and Sweden among them. Some camps are just one-offs, though. Again, he’ll head anywhere he’s invited.

During his adventures, he tries to take in the local scenery and learn about the local cultures and histories.

“The coolest place and the most fun place is where I’m at right now,” Walrond said. “Right now, it’s Greece. I say that wholeheartedly. This place is incredible.”

From his hotel room, he could look out over the Aegean Sea and recognize lights 15-20 miles in the distance.

“Last night, I was at a restaurant and I asked a guy, ‘Over there, across the water, those lights. What is that?’” Walrond said. “He said, ‘That’s Turkey.’”

Walrond wants to go there next.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Rick Walrond coaching basketball camps in Greece and Czech Republic