GOLD RUSH: Once in a Lifetime
10/31/2014 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
This article originally appeared in the October issue of Gold Rush
By Jay Reddick, Gold Rush
Sometime this summer - sometime between the long plane flights, the miniature banjo and the ride on the water buffalo - Keri Fulp's life changed.
The sophomore women's basketball player spent three weeks in Vietnam as a member of the Coach for College program, teaching middle-school-age children. The program was founded in 2007 by Parker Goyer, then a tennis player at Duke, and it has included dozens of student-athletes in the years since, including several from Wake Forest.
Fulp said her involvement with the program began almost as a lark.
"It started in mid-January," Fulp said. "I was in the athletic offices talking to someone, and (Associate Athletic Director for Student-Athlete Academic Counseling) Jane Caldwell just said, `Hey Keri, want to go to Vietnam?' And I said, `Sure. ... What am I going for?' I love to travel, so I was all for it. It just made sense."
The more Fulp, a Winston-Salem native and East Surry High graduate, learned about the trip, the more excited she got. She would get to share two of her great passions - basketball and physics - with children from another culture, along with teaching them assorted life skills.
Even her experiences during the first weekend of the trip solidified one resolution Fulp had made - "Be open to everything. It's the best way to be in a totally different culture."
Her journey began with a long layover in Narita, Japan, which included a visit to a Buddhist temple. From there, it was on to Ho Chi Minh City, where she spent two days seeing more cultural sights - her introduction to the more cosmopolitan, densely populated area of the country.
"It was so busy there," Fulp said. "The city is obviously growing very quickly, and it was very hot. But that first weekend, we visited a war museum, and it was so eye-opening. The experience of seeing the war from that perspective makes you a little sick to your stomach. It made me appreciate talks I had with Vietnamese coaches later in the trip ... they talk freely about the war and have no hard feelings toward Americans."
She watched what she called a sort of Cirque du Soleil show, a retelling of Vietnamese history set to music from a dan nguyet, a traditional Vietnamese instrument resembling a banjo - she liked the instrument so much that she bought one for herself before she left the country.
All of that happened before Fulp had even met her students. The middle-school kids took classes in four different academic subjects, played four different sports, and all took a life-skills class. Fulp was immediately charmed.
"I never considered myself teacher material - I can be pretty impatient," said the 6-foot-3 forward. "But to go in every morning and see the kids and their smiling faces when they figured out a problem was really exciting. On the basketball court, their faces would light up just from a simple dribbling drill. Some of my students didn't even have shoes, but they were still so happy.
"They would give us gifts. They made us wreaths of flowers, origami and keychains."
Fulp and her fellow instructors spent the weekdays teaching at the campsite. Fulp was the only American student teaching physics at the camp. She said she's had a love for the subject since the age of 8.
"I knew when I chose to come to Wake Forest that I would study physics here and get an engineering degree," Fulp said. "It's inevitable. When I was little, I would always be taking things apart and putting them back together, building things in the garage with scrap wood."
Between classes, Fulp and her colleagues visited different areas of the country on the weekends - and the list of things she got to experience in just those few weeks could take most people a lifetime to complete. She sang karaoke at a hotel in Can Tho, rode motorcycles across the Mekong Delta and made her own chocolate at a cocoa farm, all while making friends she said she'll never lose.
During the last weekend in the country, the Coach for College tradition is that the student-athletes visit some of the children in their houses, another real eye-opener for Fulp.
"We biked with them out from their schools to their houses - on their bikes. Pee-wee bikes, with no brakes and bad steering," Fulp said. "It was probably a good 10K we rode that day. But when we got there, we went to so many houses and met so many great people. We got to experience how they harvest rice and how they dry it."
Watching the rice harvest gave her an idea. Remember her motto for the trip, "Be open to everything"? She took it to the extreme.
"I had seen how they harvest the rice, and one of the methods they use involves a water buffalo," Fulp said. "I had been saying I wanted to ride one. On the way out on our bike trip that last weekend, we stopped by one. I hoped to ride it, but it ended up charging the group. On the way back, I found a nicer one and rode it for a bit. It was much more friendly."
Fulp said she had traveled "a decent amount" as a kid, including a stint as an exchange student in Russia during high school.
"I love to go anywhere and experience new cultures," Fulp said. "It's been my goal to visit every continent at least once."
But her first visit to Asia is one she'll never forget. She said it will help her in her daily life, in school and in basketball.
"For about a week after I got back, I was incapable of expressing what it all meant to me," Fulp said. "I needed time to process it. It changed me - the way I act in general is different, definitely in a positive way. I want to influence those around me, my teammates and friends, in a positive way as well."
Fulp saw action in 25 games last season for the Deacons, averaging about 10 minutes per game. She hopes to be a bigger contributor in the coming year - on the court as well as off it.
"I'm expecting to go in and do my best every day," Fulp said. "I might have a little different mindset and vision now, definitely in a good way. It's a vital point to get ready for the season ahead, and I'm in a very good place."
Before she left Asia, she resolved to come back very soon.
"It became very clear what my life will be after college. I'm going to be a missionary," Fulp said. "Southeast Asia was really awesome."
