First-Year Coach DeMarco Wilkinson Making Waves in His Community

It’s a Wednesday night in late October and DeMarco Wilkinson is in the middle of the action.

The first-year coach of the Kuyper College Junior Varsity Gold team is running a scrimmage between his Kuyper hoopsters and members of the Grand Rapids Fusion, a semi-pro basketball team that for the past decade he has not only coached but also co-owned.

Since everybody in the gym is one of his players, they all seek him out as they wander in, giving him a fist bump and a smile and a friendly hello. The shared camaraderie is comfortable and familiar for Wilkinson, who has spent many an hour in gyms around the world as both a player and a coach. And this setting on this night — the Potter’s House Elementary School — is also a familiar and comfortable one for Wilkinson. It’s where he has coached middle school basketball for the last decade-plus.

A week-and-a-half later it’s a Saturday morning in early November.

The scene has shifted to Eastern Avenue Christian Reformed Church and its Saturday Food Program which each week hands out some 120-150 boxes of food and where Wilkinson, who has worked part time as the program’s director for six years now, again is in the middle of the action.

This time there are no basketballs in play, but there are fruits, vegetables, bread,  canned goods and more in abundance. And as the action unfolds, Wilkinson again is the recipient of plenty of smiles, greetings and even a fist bump or two.

The Saturday Food Program at Eastern Avenue has served its community since 1982, and Wilkinson does everything from building and growing relationships with vendors to coordinating and directing the volunteers who sort and box food to ensuring a welcoming space for all.

The tagline for the outreach effort is “Connect with God and with us Saturday mornings at our Food Program.”

Wilkinson loves the motto.

“As the food program director, faith for me is always first. Being able to serve in the community that I grew up in is absolutely amazing. I feel that I was called by God to serve there, and with food, I help spread love, hope and joy to many families every Saturday.” 

Wilkinson said that is true not just of his efforts on Saturday mornings but also his efforts as a coach, as a co-owner of the Fusion, as a high school and college basketball official and as a father to three adult children.

And while he chuckles when asked about his busy schedule and multiple responsibilities, he said too that he hopes everything he has going on in his life can perhaps be an inspiration to others, including his players.

“My work in the community is out of passion, where I connect with God’s people,” he said simply. “My work with coaching and officiating is from my desire to teach and give back. And I hope that my work overall should tell my Kuyper players about setting and achieving goals, about having a passion and being driven and most importantly about being prayerful and having a prayer life.”

Wilkinson was an outstanding athlete during his high school days at Grand Rapids Catholic Central High School, excelling in both basketball and track and field. It was in the latter pursuit that he attracted college scholarship offers, finally deciding on the University of Findlay in Ohio before moving on to the University of Michigan where he eventually earned his undergraduate degree and an MBA.

But as he recently recalled that athletic journey, what he focused on was the real foundations of what would eventually lead to lifelong success.

“My faith now leads the way with absolutely everything,” he said. “But I remember being a student-athlete where it wasn’t always that way. Now, as I start my first season at Kuyper, I know we need to incorporate faith into our everyday practice and lives at every step of the way. As they face the world, it’s something that every young athlete needs. A good, strong, Christian foundation is what sets them up for success.”

He added that his experiences before even getting to high school and college also shaped him in profound ways. 

He told Bold Journey Magazine in a recent interview that his confidence and self esteem comes from his mother, noting that though his dad passed away when he was just shy of three years of age, his mom more than filled in the gap as he was coming up.

“I’d face many tough challenges, but she believed in no excuses,” he said. “She’d tell me, ‘You do the job, you do your very best and you can do absolutely anything you want to do.'”

Her own history shaped her resolve in powerful ways, Wilkinson added, and she never let her children forget that they stood on the shoulders of those who had blazed a path for them.

“She grew up with four sisters and five brothers in the south, and she never let a time go by when she didn’t remind us of the struggle for Blacks to have even the basic things,” he recalled. “Education was a must and excelling in education was our way of showing our appreciation for those that studied before us and the many people who fought for the rights of Blacks and minorities to be able to obtain education.”

He laughed as he remembered another aspect of his childhood.

“I have what you’d call a praying family,” he said. “It wasn’t uncommon to have weekly Bible studies and be in church twice a week or more. My faith was where I sought peace and comfort; my faith is what guided me and gave me strength.”

All of those elements of his own life growing up helped Wilkinson make his decision when he first learned about the job coaching the Gold team at Kuyper.

“I wasn’t really looking for another coaching opportunity,” he said. “But coaching at Kuyper presented me with a very specific opportunity to mentor young athletes in a Christian environment. The opportunity to lead and guide those young athletes at the age where they are truly finding themselves and figuring out how they’ll fit in the world was a special one.”

And, he said, coaching basketball presents specific ways in which to forge faith and more.

“What I love most about coaching basketball is that the lessons you teach can be used for a multitude of other things, especially for life,” he said. “Those lessons of hard work, problem solving, dedication and sacrifice last a lifetime. But our walk with Christ is even more important.”

As he looks ahead to the Gold team’s home opener on Saturday, November 9 against the Cornerstone JV team in the Boonstra Gymnasium and Fitness Center, his eyes widen a little in anticipation.

“The hard work and conditioning may have caught them off guard, but they are coming around to seeing the results of their hard work,” he said. “We will be an exciting team to watch this year.”