“A fancy jail.”

    That’s how Dover High School junior Pieter Prinsloo, center for the varsity boys basketball team, describes his former life.

    His house was surrounded by an eight-foot concrete wall that had a four-foot electric fence sitting on top of it. The only way in was through an electric gate operated by a switch inside the car, and one didn’t dare exit the car until the gate was closed safely behind them.

    Every door on the house had a security gate on it, and inside the house were three dogs trained to attack anyone unfamiliar to them. His parents kept a pistol locked in a safe in their closet for a little more protection.

    This is where the 6-foot 10-inch stand-out for the Senators lived until he was 12, in his “fancy jail” in Pretoria, South Africa.

    It’s been nearly five years since Prinsloo, along with his parents and older sister, left that life behind, and to this day he said he has no intention of returning for good.

    “It’d be nice to go back and relax and visit my friends,” he said. “I’d like to go, but there’s too much stuff going on there for me to move back.”

A major move

    Eight years ago, Prinsloo’s father, Daniel, altered his family’s lives forever when he moved to the United States at the request of his older sister, to work for higher wages than what he was earning in his homeland.

    Moves such as this are not uncommon, Pieter said, as South African men are willing to work hard labor no matter what. And since parts are expensive in the country and labor is cheap, men benefit from the system working the opposite way in the U.S.

    “South African boys are willing to come over here for nine months, work hard and send the money home to their family,” he said.

    Daniel’s plan was a little more long-term, however, as he planned on spending approximately five years in the States beginning in 2001, visiting home every nine months or so and then returning to the Annapolis, Md., area to work again and earn more money.

    “My dad came over here and worked with plasma TVs and home theater systems,” Pieter said.

    A couple of months after Daniel settled in the States in 2002, Pieter, his mom Ann-Marie and sister Elma paid a three-week visit, which Pieter said was the beginning of the journey that would eventually lead his whole family to living in the U.S.

    “I was here for two days and told my parents that I want to live here,” Pieter said. “My mom didn’t want to do it though, because all of her family is in South Africa.”

    It was only three weeks after the Prinsloos had returned home, however, that Ann-Marie was forced into a change of heart.

    The electricity meter outside their house had been broken open and vandalized, leaving the home without electricity. On top of that, the Prinsloo’s neighbors were carjacked right in their own driveway.

    “My mom just finally said she couldn’t live like that,” Pieter said.

    The Prinsloos made the decision to head to the U.S. to join Daniel, who at the time was looking to relocate in his job because of growing frustration with traffic and the commute in the Washington, D.C. area.

    He got his transfer to work in Delaware, south-eastern Pennsylvania and northern Maryland, and one day found a place he thought would make a suitable home for his family to move to, Middletown.

    “My dad called my mom and said, ‘I found a town that’s very similar to where we live in South Africa and I want to live there,” Pieter said.

    After Elma graduated from high school at the end of 2003, the Prinsloos packed up their lives and headed to Middletown in January 2004.

Adjusting to safety

    Because the South African school year ends in December, Pieter arrived in the U.S. already having completed fifth grade.

    He tested into sixth grade and completed it in three months, finishing on time with all of the other students.

    The adjustment, he said, was not difficult. One of the major barriers was his thick South African accent, and his inability to understand his classmates and friends in their American accents, but he said he picked up on things fast.

    “The first year and a half my accent was still strong,” he said. “Also, with my friends I had to listen close. It was a task to understand what they said.”

    Another transition was adjusting to the simple feeling of safety, Pieter said. While it did not take long to get comfortable with his new surroundings, at age 12 he was aware of the major difference, as were his mom and sister.

    “In South Africa, one of my friends lived a half mile down the street and instead of walking my mom would take me there every day because it wasn’t safe,” he said. “Here, there’s no walls around the houses. You can leave your car in the street here, where in South Africa the windows would at least be broken if you did that.

    “I know my mom, when we came to visit in 2002, was used to when she went shopping having her purse over her shoulder and under her arm,” Pieter added. “But here, you can leave your purse in the cart and walk down the aisle to grab an item. My dad just said to her, ‘relax, we don’t have those kinds of problems here.’”

Introduction to basketball

    In South Africa, the most Pieter said he ever knew of basketball was seeing it once on ESPN. And even then, the game seemed foreign.

    Like most boys his age in South Africa, Pieter said he played rugby and cricket, and deemed himself a “sports kid.”

    When he came to Delaware, however, he had to find a new sport to love as his two most familiar are not as popular over here.

    Pieter said he took to football quickly because of its similarity to rugby, but eventually gravitated toward basketball in seventh grade after suggestions he play based on his height.

    It’s been a love affair between Pieter and the game ever since.

    “You’ll always see me playing” he said. “If I’m not in the gym, then I’m probably in the park playing ball.”

    At 17 years old now, Pieter is using his love and dedication to basketball to help get into a good college.

    “One of my former coaches said that if I really want to go to college and play basketball, then I needed to work at it,” he said. “After freshman year I stopped playing football, and day-in and day-out I’m in the gym playing basketball.”

    The idea of going to college, and especially playing basketball at that level, still shocks him a little.

    He said he knows now how important moving to the U.S. was, and realizes the magnitude of the decision his parents made and how it will affect his future.

    “Once I got into middle school I started to realize what my dad really did for us,” Pieter said. “At first it was just a fun move, but around eighth and ninth grade I realized that my dad opened up my future for me to not be a nobody.

    “I have a choice of what I can become, and with hard work I can do what I want to.”

Another move

    In January 2008, the Prinsloo’s house was sold to developers in Middletown, leaving them until April to relocate to a nice, affordable house.

    The family ventured a little further south to Smyrna, meaning Pieter was too far from Middletown High, where he had gone for his first two years, to commute for his final two.

    He narrowed his choices down to Smyrna and Dover high schools, eventually settling on Dover because its Advanced Placement program suited him better academically.

    With the school-choice transfer, Dover picked up a new center for its basketball team and a stellar student, while Pieter was reunited with his freshman year basketball coach from Middletown, Stephen Wilson.

    Wilson, who is a first-year head coach with the Senators, said getting a player like Pieter has helped not only in his stellar play on the court, but also in helping the new coach communicate his message through someone that already understands what he wants.

    “He knows what to expect when the kids ask questions about me,” he said. “I’m so animated and into the game sometimes that they think I’m yelling at them. I’m not, I’m into the game, and he’s helped them a lot with that.”

    A strong work ethic is something Wilson said has taken over Pieter in the past two years, which demonstrates his dedication to the sport and to playing it on a college level.

    “Most of the time Pieter is up there with the guards in sprints and suicides, which you don’t usually see with big guys,” he said. “He’s not afraid of the weight room anymore, and with the help of and support of his parents he is viewed as an elite basketball player on the east coast now.”

    Although he misses his friends at Middletown, and his friends and family back in South Africa, Pieter is adjusting to life nicely at Dover High.

    “The people here are nice, and making friends wasn’t an issue,” he said. “It was just getting to know new people again. I’m happy with the choice I made.”

Email Brian Citino at brian.citino@doverpost.com