After hosting a multi-sport session for local youth at the Basement Sports headquarters, our team asked participants to talk about the funnest and most exciting plays of the day. Hot off the field, the young sports enthusiasts were only too happy to indulge our interview requests.

“How’d you do it?” our head coach asked the victorious team of a basketball match. “How’d you pull off with that winning shot?”

“I was standing still,” a fledgling NBA candidate replied, by way of setting the scene. “I bent my legs . . . and at that moment, people yelled ‘shoot’! And there it went!”

“I wished for it, and it went in,” his teammate earnestly added.

After a nail-biting hockey match, another player was equally candid.

“So, when I was about to shoot, I used this trick,” he said. “Instead of my inside foot where I could control it, but then he’ll block it; instead I used my front font, so wherever I kick it, it goes a different way, and then I made the goal!”

An exhilarating soccer game was quick to follow. It was so exhilarating, in fact, that a victorious kicker had only this to say:  “When I did the goal, I didn’t even try and get it in! I didn’t even try! And I just made it!”

The enthusiasm of the young all-stars was infectious, to say the least. More to the point, their passion speaks to a deeper truth behind Basement Sports and the environment we seek to accomplish: one in which winning and losing are secondary concerns, and where playfulness, team-building, and a genuine passion for vigorous exercise are paramount.

The American Academy of Pediatrics has stated that the act of play is crucial to children’s development. Researchers, meanwhile, continue to uncover the myriad benefits of physical exercise. Any chance to be part of the solution is an opportunity we welcome. If kids can score a goal, a home run, or a slum dunk along the way, then so much the better.