For years, Westminster senior Priscilla Hernandez and her sisters have been conducting volleyball clinics for children living in Bimini. In fact, she’s earned more than 1,000 volunteer hours working with Bimini Buds.
Recently, the volleyball clinics have been expanded to the Dominican Republic.
“We wanted to expand and see what else what we could do,” she says.
They go to the Bahamas four times a year for four to five days at a time.
“We go to one school that we use the gym and all the girls go there,” she says.
The Hernandez clan provided an indoor net program for the school’s volleyball program.
“The girls’ volleyball team in Bimini qualified for nationals this year and they sent us all a picture with their jerseys which was amazing,” she says.
The Bimini Buds program provided volleyball uniforms to both schools in Bimini – Gateway Christian and Louis McDonald High School.
Hernandez says her family has been vacationing in Bimini since she was born. They’ve been doing the clinics since she was eight.
The children who attend the clinics to learn how to play volleyball learn about the clinics via word of mouth. Most of the children come to the clinics in flip flops and dressed in non-athletic clothing.
“Some come now with shoes,” she says.
The children are told about the clinics by the principal/director of the school and then the girls spread the word to other girls on the island. They also get the word out via Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
“We show up and we teach them the basics,” she says.
The program has been handed down from sister to sister, including Sylvia, Isabella, now Priscilla and soon, Saskia, a freshman at Westminster. Now one sister plays.
“My sister plays for the University of Miami,” she says. “All of us play or played for Westminster.”
The Hernandez sisters also provided volleyballs and jerseys for the school in Bimini.
“We got jerseys for the middle school and high school, junior varsity and varsity,” she says. “With the help of the Miami Elite Volleyball Club.”
Hernandez says there are differences between the clinics in the Bahamas and the one in the Dominican Republic.
“These girls in the Dominican Republic have nothing,” she says. “They have no family and barely have clothes.”
They had so many children attending the six-day Dominican Republican clinic they broke into smaller groups with each sister taking on five or six kids.
“Sometimes they’d play together in a big group,” she says.
Working with the girls in both places has taught Hernandez to take every opportunity you have and use it.
“You don’t know what is to come in the future,” she says.
She loves working with the girls.
“To see them light up when you give them just a little affection, it gives you such joy,” she says.
Hernandez will hand over planning for the trips and the agenda for the clinics to her younger sister at the end of the school year. She will continue to go on the trips, just as her older sister does, but won’t have time to work on the planning because she’ll be attending the University of Miami.
Hernandez is committed to attend the University of Miami next year.
“I’ve always wanted to go there since I was little,” she says.
At Westminster, she plays soccer, softball and volleyball. She on the school’s Leadership Council. The Leadership Council plans school events such as Homecoming and prom.
She participates in GOALS, a club that has teens playing soccer with autistic children.
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
