(Hanover Basketball Camp above before my freshman year of high school. I am third row from the bottom all the way to the right)
When I first started playing basketball, I had an urge inside to play...all the time. It would drive me crazy if I couldn't shoot, or play. I was around 10 years old when a friend of my cousins told me what he used to do. We didn't have Nerf goals, so he taught me how to take a metal coat hanger and make it into a rim. You spin the top off, then put it in the top of your door. I got more elaborate as time went on by putting string on for a net and cardboard cut out to make backboards. At one time, I had a full court in my bedroom, and I played full schedules. Usually, as Henryville playing every top team in the state and we never lost...always undefeated. The ball could be any ball, but what I ended up doing was taking a sock or two and wrapping them up in gray tape. It would bounce and you could shoot it and it would last a long time.What I think back on now is the unbelievable patience my parents had. I played games with play by play. I played games and was fouled by bumping into the walls. I played games running up and down the court, throwing the ball off the walls for give and go plays. When I had friends over, we would play one on one and it could get pretty physical. I don't know if as a parent, I could put up with what I did. I would play music and that would be the length of the game. 5 songs would be halftime, 5 more would be the end of the game. I got to where I knew towards the end of the last song when the half or the game would end.
My father built the goal that I had in my yard. He used wood from an old house he had torn down, dug the hole and put it up. It had no area to shoot a layup with a gap...the boards were right there. It was built on a small hill and the rim broke hanging down in front. It was why my shot was so flat early in high school because I shot so many times at that goal.
The court wasn't paved, it was grass until I turned it into dirt. It was dirt when it was dry, it was mud when it rained and when it snowed....it was both snowy and muddy. I can remember shooting on that goal in the dirt, the mud and wearing gloves in the winter to go and shoot. I remember watching basketball games on t.v. and I could not stand it, I had to get up and go out and shoot, yet I wanted to watch the game so it was a continuous back and forth. Inside to watch the game, outside to shoot, back inside to watch...and so on. Again, the patience of my parents.
How often do kids do that now? I know my own children have many basketball goals in the house, none made by them. There are many basketballs in the house, none made by them. Are we stealing something from our children by not allowing them to use their imaginations? Are we stealing something by having everything they do organized and scheduled? I think so, but I might also be a parent who remembers the "good old days" but while participating back then, my parents and grandparents were probably looking at me thinking of what I was missing out on from their own childhoods.
