For a few weeks this spring, Mike Fratangelo woke each morning to the sweet sounds of the Persian Gulf, a body of water and its accompanying beaches that less than two decades ago served as the epicenter for a war bearing the same name.

When Fratangelo walked out of his apartment and headed to the gym for his tryout with a Kuwaiti professional basketball team, he would be quickly surrounded by hordes of unfamiliar faces, people with little knowledge of his culture.

For Fratangelo, though, exposure to atypical scenery was nothing new.

"I went to Wilkinsburg High School. I was the only white student in my class, so I had my own diversity experiences growing up," he said, laughing.

Fratangelo hasn't just experienced diversity, he has made it his career.

And basketball has been his principal platform.

A 2003 Wilkinsburg graduate, Fratangelo might only be a few years removed from his days pushing the ball up the floor for former Tigers coach Art Griffiths, but his push toward bringing people of different races and backgrounds together has reached a very activepace.

Fratangelo just completed his third summer as director of DiverseCity Hoops Summer Basketball Camp, which stresses improvement and growth off the court just as much as it does on it. At the same time, Fratangelo is actively pursuing a professional playing career overseas.

The camp, held at Haverford College outside Philadelphia, was the brainchild of Fratangelo and friend Greg Rosnick, with whom he attended classes and were teammates at Haverford. Fratangelo graduated with high honors two years ago with a degree in race and cultural studies, and recently earned a masters degree in social research from Bryn Mawr College. When Fratangelo and Rosnick sought a way to apply what they learned to community-based situations, the camp was born.

"We were taking education courses, and a lot of the material we were dealing with was theory based," Fratangelo said.

"We thought to ourselves, 'In what way can we make this theory a practical application to the real world?' And we thought what better way to combine something that we love, basketball, with another interest of ours, diversity, and make a camp out of it."

The camp, which in addition to basketball includes classroom sessions on topics such as leadership and identity, again made strides as far as participation this year, drawing about 50 youngsters for each of the two sessions, one for campers in second through fifth grade and another for those in sixth through ninth grade. Some of the campers were from the inner city and others from the suburbs.

"The whole idea is to get kids to know each other, to work with each other and to succeed through basketball," Fratangelo said.

As for his own on-court talents, Fratangelo is hoping more success will soon come his way. A 6-foot-3 combo guard who averaged double figures in points each of his final two years at Haverford, Fratangelo tried out for Al Arabi, a professional team in Kuwait, back in March. Fratangelo said each team in the league is allowed to have two "imports" on its roster.

The league begins in October, and Fratangelo expects to hear soon in regard to his future there, or potentially in another country, perhaps Germany.

"It went really well when I was [in Kuwait]," Fratangelo said. "I haven't signed a contract for this upcoming year, but I have an agent working hard for me to get a job and I'm just trying to get my foot in the door of a league. It's always been a dream of mine to play professionally."

Wherever Fratangelo lands, it's a good bet he'll blend in quickly. You don't have to go any further back than his days at Wilkinsburg to realize that.

Said Fratangelo: "The people and the lessons that I learned at Wilkinsburg, those are things I'll take with me for the rest of my life. Those experiences I wouldn't trade for the world."