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GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Nov. 14, 2022: It\u2019s 5 p.m. on a Thursday, and Islam Hoxha is pacing the hallways of the Gerald R. Ford Fieldhouse.<\/p>\nGRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Nov. 14, 2022: It\u2019s 5 p.m. on a Thursday, and Islam Hoxha is pacing the hallways of the Gerald R. Ford Fieldhouse.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s nervous.<\/p>\n
A first-year assistant coach for the Grand Rapids Community College\u2019s men\u2019s basketball team, Hoxha said he gets nervous before every game. But on this mid-November day, he and the Raiders are 2 \u00bd hours away from tipoff against their archrivals, the Lansing Community College Stars.<\/p>\n
And although Hoxha is new to the GRCC program, he knows that his head coach, Joe Fox, spent three seasons working under the leadership of Hall of Fame coach Mike Ingram at LCC, so this game has particular meaning for Fox. Which means it has particular meaning for Hoxha. Which means even more pre-game jitters than normal.<\/p>\n
Still, basketball, Hoxha knows, is not life and death.<\/p>\n
He knows this because he knows life and death.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do still have memories of Kosovo,\u201d he said of his home country, while safely ensconced in the cozy confines of the Fieldhouse. \u201cI can remember riding on my dad\u2019s shoulders as he carried me, as my family fled to the mountains in search of safety, running from the people who wanted to kill us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was 1998, and Islam Hoxha was 5 years old. He and his family were caught in the middle of the\u00a0Kosovo war, an approximately 16-month conflict that pitted forces from Yugoslavia against the\u00a0Kosovo Liberation Army<\/a>. Really though, the violence of the war had been going on for most of Hoxha\u2019s life, beginning already in the early 1990s when the KLA formed to fight the persecution of Kosovo Albanians.<\/p>\n So, after running to the mountains, the Hoxha family just kept going, first to Macedonia and eventually to the United States.<\/p>\n Hoxha was 7 years old and starting over in a new country, fluent in the languages of Albania, Bosnia and Serbia but knowing no English.<\/p>\n He smiled as he recalled that time in his life.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were welcomed,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had families who sponsored us and helped us. At school, we were put in a class with other refugees, so we could learn together. We had English language services available to us, and we just had so many people who helped us. I can\u2019t thank them enough.\u201d<\/p>\n Part of his refuge, he says now, was sports. His dad had been a professional soccer player, so at Forest Hills Northern, Islam was a standout member of the school\u2019s soccer team. He never played basketball though, neither in high school nor in college, first attending GRCC for two years taking hospitality courses and then finishing up at LCC in the hospitality program.<\/p>\n So, how did a soccer-playing native of Kosovo end up as an assistant coach on the GRCC men\u2019s basketball team? Well, part of the story includes a woman. And part of it is hooked to Hoxha\u2019s bold approach to life.<\/p>\n Again, he smiles as he recounts the story.<\/p>\n \u201cI had met someone on a trip back to Kosovo,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were dating and then she became my fianc\u00e9 and now she is my wife. But before that happened, I went back for a year to be with her. And one day, I went to see the local basketball team practice. And then I went to see their director of basketball operations, and I said to him, \u2018I would like to join your staff as a volunteer.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n And that\u2019s how Islam Hoxha became an assistant coach for the 2021-22 season for the KB Rahoveci Vreshtar\u00ebt in the Kosovo Basketball Superleague, the top professional league in Kosovo and a member of FIBA, which governs the sport of basketball worldwide.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had a coach from Greece, another from Turkey,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had a dozen (NCAA) Division I players from the U.S. It was the learning experience of a lifetime.\u201d<\/p>\n Now Hoxha is back in the U.S., working at Corewell Health (formerly Spectrum Health) as a patient services representative even as he plans to enter a new GRCC neurodiagnostic apprenticeship program that sees the college partnering with Corewell to fill a growing gap in the health care system.<\/p>\n And he is sharing his experiences in Kosovo \u2013 and his deep love for basketball \u2013 with the GRCC basketball program, its 15 players and his fellow coaches.<\/p>\n \u201cI love basketball because it\u2019s a beautiful game,\u201d he said simply. \u201cBut another reason I love it\u00a0is because I know I am helping young men achieve some goals they have set for themselves. It\u2019s meaningful to be a part of their lives and always be there for them when they need advice, knowledge or just someone to talk to.\u201d<\/p>\n And, he added, there is a strong element in his coaching philosophy of paying it forward.<\/p>\n \u201cComing to the United States as a refugee, a lot of people helped my family and me in the beginning and I could never be more thankful,\u201d he said. \u201cSo, helping these young men get to where they want to be in life as people and as athletes is definitely a way in response to everyone who has helped me.\u201d<\/p>\n Fox said that in Hoxha\u2019s short time with the program, he already is making a big difference.<\/p>\n \u201cIt’s hard to overstate how he has helped us in his first semester on campus,\u201d Fox said. \u201cComing from the world of professional basketball, he sees the game with a different eye. The guys really respect his knowledge of the game and love learning from him. Beyond that, the players also respond to his positive energy.\u201d<\/p>\n In return, Hoxha said he is thrilled to be learning from Fox, whose coaching roots run deep.\u00a0 Gary Fox, Joe\u2019s dad, was a longtime coach at Greenville High School, and George Fox, Joe\u2019s granddad, won a state championship with Magic Johnson at Lansing Everett.<\/p>\n \u201cCoach Fox already has helped me a lot with learning the game further,\u201d Hoxha said. \u201cAnd, hopefully, me bringing some knowledge from the European way will help further bring success to the program.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoxha noted that before the game against Lansing Community College the team ran a new warm-up, based on large part on what the team at KB Rahoveci had used to get ready for games.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we don\u2019t win tonight,\u201d he had said with a laugh prior to tipoff, \u201cwe might not ever run it again.\u201d<\/p>\n But at the end of the contest, the big scoreboard at the fieldhouse told the tale: GRCC 106, LCC 99, as the Raiders ran their 2022 record to a perfect 4-0 and the new warmup got its first \u201cW.\u201d<\/p>\n Nervous no more, Hoxha could only smile as he walked with the team from the floor to the locker room after a hard-fought victory.<\/p>\n Prior to the game, just two hours earlier, he leaned in with his fellow coaches and the players for a final cheer before the Raiders took the floor.<\/p>\n Together they had shouted, \u201cOne, two, three, team. Four, five, six, family.\u201d<\/p>\n In that moment, it was hard for Hoxha to not think about the path his life has taken and the journeys he has been on with both his biological family and now his GRCC basketball family.<\/p>\n And while he knows his players aren\u2019t literally riding on his shoulders to safety, as he once did with his dad, Hoxha said he hopes they\u2019re perhaps doing so metaphorically.<\/p>\n \u201cTo me, personally, that chant is powerful,\u201d he said. \u201cIt means I know I am changing someone\u2019s life for the good every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Nov. 14, 2022: It\u2019s 5 p.m. on a Thursday, and Islam Hoxha is pacing the hallways of the Gerald R. Ford Fieldhouse. He\u2019s nervous. A first-year assistant coach for the Grand Rapids Community College\u2019s men\u2019s basketball team, Hoxha said he gets nervous before every game. But on this mid-November day, he and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4896,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_rtcl_gb_attr":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[112],"class_list":["post-4895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-michigan"],"aioseo_notices":[],"rttpg_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",700,450,false],"landscape":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",700,450,false],"portraits":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",700,450,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha-300x193.jpg",300,193,true],"large":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",640,411,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",700,450,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",700,450,false],"rtcl-gallery":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",700,450,false],"rtcl-thumbnail":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha-320x240.jpg",320,240,true],"rtcl-gallery-thumbnail":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha-150x105.jpg",150,105,true],"psacp-medium":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha.jpg",500,321,false],"rpwe-thumbnail":["https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/p.-4-GRCC-Islam-Hoxha-45x45.jpg",45,45,true]},"rttpg_author":{"display_name":"LaPrensa Newspaper","author_link":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/author\/laprensa\/"},"rttpg_comment":0,"rttpg_category":"Michigan<\/a>","rttpg_excerpt":"GRAND RAPIDS, Mich., Nov. 14, 2022: It\u2019s 5 p.m. on a Thursday, and Islam Hoxha is pacing the hallways of the Gerald R. Ford Fieldhouse. He\u2019s nervous. A first-year assistant coach for the Grand Rapids Community College\u2019s men\u2019s basketball team, Hoxha said he gets nervous before every game. But on this mid-November day, he and","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4895"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4897,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4895\/revisions\/4897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4895"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laprensanewspaper.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=4895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}