In fall 2023, Pearl Dickson showed up to her first practice at Berkshire, hoping to impress the team that had taken an interest when she lived a world away in Ghana.
But there was a big hurdle: the 6-foot-4 center had never played an organized basketball game in her life.
Dickson recalls the first practice vividly. Her head spun as Berkshire coach Junior De La Hoz ran the Bears through drills she had never seen before; all Dickson had ever practiced was dribbling and scoring around the basket. Dickson tried to follow her new teammates’ lead, and De La Hoz implored her to shout if she had questions.
“Then we started doing plays, and I'm like, OK, I don't do this back home because I don't play,” she said.
Dickson has been in the United States for less than two years, thrust from her home village in Ghana to chase basketball and the opportunities that come with it. She has already improved significantly through her sophomore year, having won our NEPSAC Class B Defensive Player of the Year award after helping Berkshire reach the Class B semifinals.
Prep schools commonly recruit from abroad. De La Hoz, between his time coaching at Berkshire and Proctor, typically looks outside the U.S. for post players about every four years. Dickson is the next raw prospect hoping to tap into her boundless potential. Her experiences so far also show the daunting realities of crossing continents to pursue her dream.
“I told my assistant (once), I was like, ‘Do you understand the amount of pressure that kid is playing with it?’” De La Hoz said. “It's a whole community, it's a whole country. She's playing for so much, so that's why she's always in the gym, she's always studying. She puts so much pressure on herself because she wants to be successful, and she doesn't want people back home to see her as a failure.”
Dickson is the sixth of eight siblings, from the rural village of Aboase in the central region of Ghana. One of her older brothers noticed Dickson was growing tall and told her to pursue basketball. With few local opportunities for girls, she moved four hours away at 13 years old to the capital city, Accra, and joined Charm Basketball Academy.
De La Hoz, through a connection with Walter Welsh (also Aliyah Boston’s former AAU coach) heard about Dickson through Charm. He watched film of her going through rudimentary drills, met her on a staticky WhatsApp video call and was impressed by her physical tools and her thoughtfulness. Dickson could become a boarding student at Berkshire, and the school would help sort out her visa and health insurance.
“When she told me that (she moved to Accra) — that she made that sacrifice — for me, that was it,” De La Hoz said. “I want kids like that, that are going to make sacrifices and can understand that there's a ‘why.’”
But she needed a guardian for when school was on break. Enter Xavier Allen, who volunteers for New York-based Inspiring Young Minds, a nonprofit that connects underserved students with prep school opportunities. Allen, who would go on to coach Dickson in grassroots play at Castle Athletics, agreed to be her temporary guardian.
Dickson had only known about the United States through movies. She was being propelled from village life in Ghana to a high-academic prep school with a basketball team filled with future college players.
“I've had students from the U.S. that I send to boarding school, and going to boarding school is a culture shock based on what they're expected to do locally, at their local high school and their local Catholic school,” Allen said. “Pearl completely bypassed all of that.”
Food became an immediate challenge; Dickson quickly got sick of pizza and the carb-heavy, processed food that is so common in the U.S., and De La Hoz said the already slender teenager lost a few pounds at first. She skipped meals occasionally and often waited for De La Hoz and his wife to cook for her. On one school night in May, Dickson raced from practice to see her French teacher because she had made Jollof rice, one of Dickson’s favorite dishes from home.
“When I forced myself to eat, my tummy hurt because my mind wasn't ready to take it,” she said. “It was really hard almost throughout the whole (first) year.”
Dickson takes two English classes to help her learn the language in addition to her other schoolwork. Her teachers allow her some extensions, but Dickson is self-conscious about raising her hand to ask questions and slowing down the class. She’ll write down every question and ask the teacher after class, and if she still doesn’t understand, she’ll watch YouTube videos to learn.
The same pattern translates to the court. Dickson is still getting over her anxieties about talking loudly and asking questions. She often looks around at other girls who have played for years and have developed a better feel for the game. But Dickson, who acknowledges she’s a better visual learner, will have De La Hoz and Allen send her plays to rewatch so she can understand.
“Pearl is a thinker. It takes her a lot of time to sort of listen and process things, and (that) actually was part of the biggest challenge that she had with basketball,” Allen said. “Where basketball should be more reactionary, it has to make sense to Pearl. It has to be rational. So we spend a lot of time going over plays and watching film, for her to sort of be able to process it a little faster.”
Dickson’s first organized game was a scrimmage her freshman year against Hoosac. The performance was rocky, but De La Hoz recalls her blocking one shot, grabbing a rebound, giving the ball up and sprinting the floor, getting it back around the 3-point line, and then needing two strides to glide to the basket for a layup.
“I turned around and I looked at my assistant coach, and I was like, ‘She’s gonna be good,’” De La Hoz said.
This winter, Dickson averaged nine points, 11 rebounds and three blocks as Berkshire’s starting center. She logged a double-double in the Class B semifinal matchup the Bears lost by a point in the final seconds to Rivers, growing accustomed to playing in tense environments in front of crowds.
On the AAU circuit, Dickson is showing off her rare length and athletic gifts. Allen said that during the mid-May GymRat Challenge in Albany, N.Y., an opposing coach told him beating Castle’s basic 2-2-1 zone felt impossible because Dickson was racking up so many deflections.
He also sees pressure take its toll on Dickson — the times where she retreats into her shell and goes quiet, or the times she breaks down.
“She doesn't even have to tell me,” Allen said. “I see girls here who are from home feel overwhelmed with the recruiting process in college. Now, on top of that, just think about all the sacrifices that you see your family making (at) home, and how you have to get it right. Like, this is your one opportunity.”
Dickson wants to one day either play basketball professionally overseas or become a nurse. To reach those dreams, she’ll need a college scholarship — though she and Allen are working through the process of obtaining a U.S. residency as an alternative pathway.
“The motive behind the school season is to play hard, win games, and then get to the playoffs and then win if possible. But then with AAU, it's more like, ‘Show what you know how to do best, and then get a scholarship,’ which has been so challenging,” she said. “When I step on the court during AAU season, I'm like, can I make these coaches feel like I am worth a scholarship?”
Dickson lives in Levittown, N.Y., with Allen, his wife and mother, Allen’s two daughters, and three other girls from Ghana. She’s appreciative of the family but also likes her boarding arrangement at Berkshire. It’s a rare time Dickson has quieter space for herself, where she can also pray and read her Bible. In Ghana, Dickson and her family would wake up at 5 a.m. for Sunday church services and attend six days per week. She laughs remembering the times her parents would splash water on her if she wouldn’t get out of bed.
Dickson hasn’t seen her family since she left Ghana and may not until after she graduates. Dickson texts them regularly. Her older brother Abraham, a schoolteacher, is a particularly close confidant who has supported her through her hardest days abroad. Her younger brother Jude may follow her to the U.S. and play at Cardigan Mountain. Dickson wants to show them all she lived up to their faith.
“The pressure is still there. It's so real; it's almost every day,” Dickson said. “So sometimes when I feel like giving up, I just feel like I'm not doing this for myself. I have to do it for my family, especially my brothers. So I have to keep going.”
At school, Dickson keeps growing more comfortable, but it’s hard for her not to feel like an anomaly. There have been times she is the only Black girl in her class. Her height naturally draws attention. She’s made friends but is still working to understand the subtleties of U.S. teenage social life.
Few know how dramatically Dickson’s life has changed. Her family was in the middle class relative to the rest of her home village, but that village didn’t have 24/7 access to electricity.
“Water is a huge issue,” she explained. “They can close the taps for like, a week, and then the whole village probably needs to go to the next town looking for water. It's really hard sometimes.”
So when Dickson sees people in the United States take basic necessities for granted — food waste is a particular pet peeve of hers — she remains shocked. She would see people in town who could not afford food simply starve. Others who didn’t have a home slept in shops.
“What they get here, we don't get it back at home. So we value every little thing that we get here, and then we appreciate them,” Dickson said. “I feel like people should know the backgrounds of other people, respect them and then learn from it to make their own communities developed, because the more stuff they waste without knowing, they can actually use that to help other people in other countries, because people are in need. …
“People here really have an upper hand, but then they don't know how to use it efficiently and effectively.”
