Damien Skowron of the Nashua area learns how to make a basic basketball pass from Healthy Hoops counselor Kahliah Cooper during a clinic at the Greater Nashua Boys & Girls Club on Tuesday. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

NASHUA – Hoop can be healthy.

That’s the theme for the aptly named Healthy Hoops Program, sponsored by AmeriHealth Caritas New Hampshire that had coaches work with about 100 local youths at the Greater Nashua Boys & Girls Club on Tuesday.

“We use basketball to teach the kids about healthy lifestyle,” program leader Joe Richmond, a former Harlem Globetrotter support staffer who is now an ambassador for the Delaware Bluecoats, the Philadelphia 76ers G League team. “The way to eat healthy, the way to drink healthy the way to get the rest they need. … We just have a whole crew to keep the kids engaged. We don’t care if they’re the next LeBron or the next Diana Taurasi. We use basketball as a way to get them engaged. We all know cell phones and laptops are taking away some of their social skills. So now here at Healthy Hoops we bring them together, put them in different groups, be successful at every station they’re at and everything they do.

“I love every component of it. I love the social aspect of it, the physical aspect of it, the prevention part of it. And in this day in age all those have to go hand in hand as we prepare our kids for the next step… The one thing about the Healthy Hoops program is they don’t have to love basketball. But we use it and make it fun, get them going.”

The program also stresses how to manage asthma. All those healthy aspsects certainly aren’t glossed over as before the kids took the floor yesterday they got a lesson in healthy eating from Glenn Ellis, part of Richmond’s team and a public health educator has been involved with the program for several years. In his chat with the kids, one of them asked, ‘How do I know when you eaten too many chicken nuggets?’ So you condition them to start thinking.”

Ellis said Healthy Hoops was originally started because of the increasing propensity for asthma in kids all over the country. He said the program wanted to dispel the myth that kids with asthma couldn’t exercise, as they’d be banished to the library. “That’s the worst thing you can do,” Ellis said. “You make sure the asthma is controlled and monitored. Exercise is the best thing.”

As the program evolved, Ellis said it was discovered the rise in pre teens with diabetes and hypertension. So that’s where the healthy eating focus is to go along with basketball and sports in general.

“We use basketball as a platform,” Ellis said. “But it applies to all sports. Over the years I can’t tell you how many times a kid would come to a Healthy Hoops clinic with the idea ‘I can’t play basketball, I have asthma.’ And my role is to instill information to help them start and how to reason and make choices. … Read labels. This isn’t rocket science.

“I hope each young person who participated here today will walk out of here with a better feeling about their value as both a human being and an individual, and they’ll feel a different kind of responsibility to take care of themselves.”

As far as basketball, the crew worked with the kids on fundamentals, passing and shooting. The basics.

“We don’t care if you’re good,” Joe Richmond said. “But what we do want you to do is try. We have so many stations, it gives the kids something to pick from.”

Ellis said he wants to get kids talking with each other about healthy choices.

“If you tell kids it benefits them, they’ll listen,” Joe Richmond said. “If you tell them it’s bad for them, they’ll cut you off.”

Nobody did that yesterday at the Boys & Girls Club, that’s for sure. The kids were into it.

“I think it was awesome, I had a great time,” 10-year-old Benjamin Collins, whose played junior Biddy ball in Nashua, adding that the lessons taught about healthy eating would persuade him to do just that and become a better basketball player. “And watch the Celtics a lot.”

Grayson Lewis of Nashua has been playing basketball for about five years too. “It was fun, I learned to shoot at the small hoop.”

Joe Richmond had quite an experience as part of the Globetrotters act as the referee, routinely doused with water. “They never missed,” he chuckled. He and his brother owned a semipro basketball team in the Philly area and a promoter felt Joe and his brother Mike would be great with the Globetrotters (Mike would act as the Washington Generals coach). As a result he’s been to all 50 states twice and traveled abroad. How does he translate the Globetrotter experience to this? Simple. In that and his Bluecoats job he was and is all about fun.

“It all works, right?” he said. “The Globetrotters was like my training ground. They trained me how to engage with kids, how to engage with communities. And that’s what AmeriHealth is all about, right?”

Former Harlem Globetrotter referee Joe Richmond talks to kids for the Healthy Hoops program at the Greater Nashua Boys & Girls Club on Tuesday. (Telegraph photo by TOM KING)

His brother Mike Richmond was the basketball player, playing his college ball at UTep and was a third round pick of the Dallas Mavericks in 1987, the last year when the NBA draft was seven rounds.

Did Mike ever have any group teach the same lessons when he was growing up in South Philadelphia?

“It’s funny you say that,” said Mike Richmond, who was a junior college All-American before going to UTep. “I was like, if I ever make it as a kid doing something like that, I’m going to do the same thing to motivate somebody to keep going strong.

“It’s good, you can see their faces, they’re smiling. You see as we’re doing each session they’re getting better. It takes time. Somebody’s going to be a pro in this circle.”

Kahliah Cooper didn’t play basketball in high school at Cambridge Rindge & Latin, where she ran track, but got involved with Healthy Hoops through her working with Joe Richmond for the Bluecoats a she moved to the Delaware area several years ago.

“When you incorporate something fun, with something educational and healthy, it’s the perfect combination for children,” she said. “The one thing I want to teach them is stay active but always make education as a priority.”

And that’s where basketball can come in.

“I hope they take excitement, that they want to be a part of it, that they want to do it,” Mike Richmond said. “You never want to pressure anybody to do anything. So if they can walk away and say ‘I like this game’, it makes it easier for the coaches and they’ll put the work in …

“You can never stop motivating. Clap hands, good job, keep up the good work. You can never stop doing that.”