Joint Task Force-East

Mixing it up on the court: Teenagers of Constanta and American Seabees play for a cause

Students of the high school “Mircea cel Batran” in Constanta challenged the American Seabees of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 74 stationed at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base to a unique basketball game. To raise money to aid a sick colleague, the students sold tickets to the game and collected donations from the many Romanian and the American spectators who attended.

The Seabees accepted the challenge right away, especially when they heard it was for a charitable cause. The Americans were very happy that they can participate, and the students appreciated the Seabees’ effort. The Seabees and the students played more for the public than for the score and they tried different tricks from the professional basketball. Aiming to entertain the crowd, both Romania and American players executed slam dunks, behind the back passes and scored baskets from far across the court. After four quarters of 10 minutes, the score was tied up at 48-48. The money collected at the game from Saturday night was handed to the family of the student that needs an expensive treatment overseas for cancer. His colleagues say they will continue to collect money for his treatment.

"We thought that is a noble cause, a good thing if we can help someone. The soldiers were proud to be part of such event,” said the Seabees' spokesperson Alina Savu.

A Romanian player added, "We are not trying to see how good they (the Seabees) are at basketball but in their heartst and how much they wanted to play. And they were very good. We could have not done raised the money without them."

The Seabee detachment in Romania will rotate back to Gulfport, Miss., in about four months and will be replaced by another detachment. The Seabees plan to maintain a continuous rotation of detachments to Romania and Bulgaria to upgrade military bases there and perform civic assistance projects in the two Joint Task Force-East host nations.

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