The mood was high among about 20 girls raring to hit the basketball court at the June 5 launch of an open gym for girls at St. Paul’s North End Community Center.
“I am a champion! I am a champion!” they chanted.
The open gym program, which runs from 6 to 8 p.m. every Thursday this summer, came about when St. Paul Parks and Recreation and Minnesota legislators partnered with Jamad Basketball Camps.
Jamad Basketball Camps, founded by professional basketball player and social media influencer Jamad Fiin, is a program that teaches girls to play basketball while honing self-confidence and leadership skills. More than 15,000 girls have participated in the camps in 15 cities around the world, according to the program’s website.
At the North End Community Center, girls of all ages, including many from the Somali Muslim community, are learning to play basketball under Fiin’s guidance.
Girls, especially Muslim girls, need a safe space to play sports to reach their maximum potential without boys taking over, Fiin said.
“I want the gym to be for only girls,” she said. “No boys can have a ball. No boys can shoot around.”
Fiin grew up in Boston, playing basketball every day in community centers, where she made lifelong friends and developed a strong work ethic.
She went on to play Division III basketball at Emmanuel College in Boston, where she graduated with a master’s degree in business in 2023. She has played professionally on the Somali Women’s National Basketball Team since 2017.
Anzal Bashir, 18, who attended the launch, said the girls who come to the open gym are lucky to have Fiin as a role model.
“This is amazing to see the youth getting an opportunity like this,” Bashir said. “Seeing a space where it’s just a bunch of Somalis playing, it’s fulfilling.”
Bashir has always been athletic, but said she never saw people who looked like her playing sports. She plays basketball casually, but said if she had the opportunity as a child to play basketball with other Muslim girls, she may have pursued it more seriously.
“Since I didn’t have this representation in the big leagues like college, WNBA, all of that, it was kind of just like a dream for me that I knew probably wasn’t going to happen,” Bashir said. “Maybe if I did see people like me doing it, I would have pushed more at it.”
Bashir learned about the open gym program on Fiin’s Instagram site and plans to attend the Thursday sessions through the summer.
Rayan Abdi, 19, who participated in one of Fiin’s summer camps in 2019, said many Muslim families do not approve of girls participating in “masculine” activities like basketball, but Fiin created a space where Abdi and other Muslim girls could feel confident and have fun playing sports.
“Before that, I had never really met a group of Somali girls that could play basketball, like my people I can hoop with,” Abdi said.
The North End Community Center opened in April as part of the North End Community Center Project, a $30 million project to provide better recreational spaces for the North End community, according to a report from the Minnesota House. About 24% of that community lives below the poverty line; 67.6% of residents are people of color.
The new rec center is the first facility of its kind in the North End.
Rep. Samakab Hussein, DFL-St. Paul, said the open gym and other programs at the community center will help keep youth out of trouble.
Fiin is “a superstar, and there’s a lot of followers that she has,” Hussein said. “So we try to encourage the young kids to be like her.”
Andy Rodriguez, director of St. Paul Parks, said he hopes to expand the initiative by extending the program into the fall and eventually developing a Muslim basketball team based at the community center.
“There’s a lot of positives that can happen,” he said.
Rodriguez said his goal with this initiative was to make girls of color, especially Muslim girls, feel comfortable in St. Paul.
“It’s a really intentional strategy to help build a safe space that people can learn the game of basketball or refine their skills and hopefully continue to participate in our programs,” Rodriguez said.
At the launch, Fiin told the kids to get involved in the community center, play basketball and make friends.
“I want you guys to really lock in and get better every single day,” Fiin said to the girls.
