Frank Meza tried describing his home country to his sons, Michael and Tony, and was met with skepticism.

He told them about El Salvador, where he spent his childhood until he joined his parents in the United States as a 12-year-old. Meza always talked about taking his sons there. In an unusual twist, it was Michael who led his father back to El Salvador through the game of basketball.

Michael Meza, who is entering his senior year at Simi Valley High, represented El Salvador in the COCABA Championship for Senior National teams last month in San Salvador, El Salvador.

"I think it's kind of one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities," said Simi Valley basketball coach Christian Aurand.

Meza's usual summer would be spent playing summer league games with his high school team and Amateur Athletic Union team, BTI, based out of Pasadena.

The forward/center met Luis Turcious, a player/coach with El Salvador's national team, two years ago in a basketball camp at Westmont College in Montecito. When Turious called Meza about a spot on the national team, the Simi Valley resident already knew his answer.

"I had no hesitation," Meza said. "I was ready to go."

El Salvador's national team has a variety of sponsors, including TACA, a Salvadorian airline, to help cover the cost of the trip. Once his parents figured out the logistics, Meza and his father arrived in El Salvador on July 11. Michael's older brother, Tony, 19, joined them on July 16.

At 17 years old, Michael Meza was the youngest team member. The COCABA Championship consisted of six teams, including teams from Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico.

El Salvador exceeded expectations, earning third place with a 3-2 record. Mexico and Costa Rica advanced from the preliminary-qualifying tournament for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing.

Meza had a limited role in the first two games, but found his niche and enjoyed a large role in the latter games, including a start in El Salvador's finale, a 134-55 loss to Mexico.

In five games, Meza played 15 to 20 minutes a game and averaged six points, four rebounds, two assists and a block. He had a tournament-high eight points against Mexico.

"These guys — they are grown men already — most of them," Michael said of the competition. "A bunch of them tried out with NBA teams. A bunch of them play in Europe professionally. Tthey were real strong, so I had to find ways around it like technique other than strengths because there's no way I'm going to outmuscle those guys."

The language barrier provided another challenge with El Salvador's coach, Enrique Samour, speaking only Spanish. Meza, who has taken three years of high school Spanish, picked up what he could and relied on teammates to translate.

Meza, one of four Americanized players, says the team's lack of height made the players rely on speed and a full-court press, similar to what Simi Valley employs. Although El Salvador fell short of advancing, team officials told Meza they are counting him for the next five years.

El Salvador is the only country in Central America without a professional league and instead has club teams.

Meza's team stayed in a mansion that was converted into a hotel. The once luxurious part of downtown has since been commercialized and evolved since Frank Meza's childhood.

"That was the cream of the crop," said Meza, who also visited El Salvador 11 years ago. "Very wealthy people used to live in that area. Now going back, it looks like most of the mansions they've been turned into businesses like schools, hotels, some government agencies and things like that."

The busy basketball schedule, consisting of morning shoot-arounds and evening practices before the actual tournament, left little time for sight-seeing, but what Michael Meza did see gave him a new perspective. The city is without smog regulations, so on drives from the hotel to the gym or other places in downtown there were dark clouds of exhaust.

"It's almost like a third-world country down there," he said. "It's really poor. We weren't even allowed to drink the water because their water was bad so we had to drink bottled water the whole time. People would be living in shacks made out of sheet metal, so it really gave me an appreciation for what I have."

His father took Michael and Tony to his hometown of Santa Ana and allowed them to visit relatives they had never met before. On the day of El Salvador's game against Nicarauga, 10 relatives came by bus and cab made 112-hour trip in stormy weather and created Michael Meza's own cheering section.

"They were real nice," Meza said. "They were real proud."