Bonnie Basden hadn't planned to make her home a dormitory. And she couldn't have known that it would become the empathetic embrace of a home away from home for 10 Family Island boys over the past six years.

Because six years ago, Mrs. Basden, 44, had just wanted her own son, Anthony, to attend a school that was well-rounded. Academics were all good and well; after all, strong academics could put a school on the map for generations.

But Mrs. Basden, a veteran athlete and the first female from Grand Bahama to make the national basketball team, wanted more. She wanted to see her son's school — then Sunland Lutheran School, now Sunland Baptist Academy — become the kind of school that equally courted top scholars and star athletes.

So in an unprecedented move, Mrs. Basden took the reins into her hands and presented the school with an interesting proposal. Would they offer scholarships to promising athletes in order to attract them to the school?

Her petition granted, Mrs. Basden went to work sorting out the particulars. The athletes came from Abaco, Andros, Bimini and New Providence. Mrs. Basden had looked mainly to the Family Islands, sensitive to the fact that recruiting from schools on Grand Bahama would take away from their particular athletic programmes. She feels that searching the Family Islands for promising athletes and offering them the opportunity to study on Grand Bahama, on the other hand, helps their school programmes and grants such students more exposure.

But when some of the athletes arrived on the island with backpacks and bright smiles but nowhere to

live, Mrs. Basden had to think fast.

A single mother, Mrs. Basden and her son were the only ones occupying their three bedroom home. The thought occurred to her: she had room and she had commitment.

Opening her own home to the first set of athletes in 2000, Mrs. Basden could not have predicted that the spare room in her house would draw a natural bridge to the spare corners of her heart. The boys that she boarded over the years moved into more than just her house. At the end of their experiences, they were calling her son "brother" and thanking her for the encouragement that her mothering had given them.

Once a boarder in Nassau while she attended Government High School, Mrs. Basden has an innate sensitivity for the boys so far from home. Now that her home is their new home, if only temporarily, she wants them to have the comfort, have a familial setting.

With Mrs. Basden's home established as a place for the growing number of Family Island athletes to stay while they studied at Sunland, the school's athletic programme bounded ahead with its new addition of talent.

The scouted talent helped to bolster the basketball programme in particular as the school emerged into the well-rounded image that Mrs. Basden had dreamed of all those years ago.

"We won our first championship in 1999, changing basketball for under 17 boys," says Mrs. Basden of a fateful game against Tabernacle Baptist Academy that year.

Mrs. Basden witnessed the game for that age-group move from outside courts to the gymnasium where, before, mainly under 20 males had played.

The school's team has also spent the last four years in the final eight at the Hugh Campbell Basketball Tournament in Nassau.

The scholarship programme, which includes males and females, has equally benefitted the school's track team with a number of promising students, some of who made the Carifta team.

And some of Mrs. Basden's boarders have gone on to receive basketball and baseball scholarships to colleges and high schools in the U.S.

For those who remain with her at Dorm Basden, life is quite structured. The boys, including her son, have chores to do and are expected to have their clothes pressed for school before each day begins.

On Sundays, they all go to church at St. John's Jubilee Cathedral with her, often picking up others who don't board. There are times set aside for homework after school or after sports practice. And most of all, there are family meetings and times to talk and air what is on everyone's mind.

Mrs. Basden, an on-call lab technician for Saybolt Labs who also holds a contract for the school's cafeteria where she facilitates a free lunch programme, knows that the time that these athlete-boarders spend at her home as teenagers can greatly influence their lives and characters as they grow up. She teaches them the same values that she teaches her own son.

"I grew up without a father and I didn't want my son to grow up without a father," says Mrs. Basden.

But when history repeated itself and she separated from her husband, she still wanted to impart the moral fibre to her son that would prepare him to be a good husband and father some day.

"I want to instil good morals and Christian values in (the boys)," says Mrs. Basden.

Bothered by a double standard that she feels gives more behavioural leeway to boys than girls at the future expense of the boys, she teaches the boys in her care to take responsibility for themselves and their actions.

"Too much emphasis is placed on the female," she says of the mode of child-rearing that inhibits the movements of girls but allows boys to roam about freely and unsupervised. "God planned it that the man is in charge and the way life is going now, Satan is attacking the man."

Passionate about the importance of teaching boys good values at an early age, she continues, "If they have three and four girlfriends now as teenagers, how are they going to ever settle down with one woman, get serious and be good, faithful and loving husbands and fathers?"

As the boarders, who spend an average of three years with her, come and go, she is able to see the results of the lessons that she has tried to teach them. They call overflowing with words of gratitude for those times during their stay when she took the time to prepare them for more than just the next basketball game, but life — the ultimate game where losers are not always guaranteed another shot.

Mrs. Basden is warmed by moments like the one where one of her boarders who is graduating this year assured her that even if he didn't get a scholarship to go off to college, coming to Grand Bahama and boarding with her was one of the best decisions that he had ever made in his life.

At times, she shrinks in tears when her mind lingers too long on the fact that another crew is about to leave, either for college or a better opportunity abroad. But she wants the best for them and just as they are grateful for her support, Mrs. Basden is grateful for the support of her own family, and the private scholarship donors who help to make the programme succeed.

The unexpected house-mother also feels blessed, and called by God to do this work. Often asked how she does it, she attributes the patience, the discipline, the compassion and the sacrifice to Him.

ATHLETIC PROGRAMME — Bonnie Basden, the first female from Grand Bahama to make it to the national basketball team, spurred on by her enthusiasm for sports and her desire to have her son attend a school that was well-rounded, initiated an athletic scholarship programme for Family Island students at Sunland Baptist Academy in 2000. Since then her home has served as a boarding place for 10 male athletes, some of whom have gone on to receive athletic scholarships to colleges and private schools abroad. Mrs. Basden is pictured with her boarders and her son. From left to right are Vanrico Toote, Dennis Murray, Anthony Basden, Livingston Cornish, Jay Phillipe and Marco Cooper.