Good times at Hoops!!

"The trampoline,” Hana, 5, tells Fadi in Arabic after he translated my question of what was her favorite part of her day at Hoops. After the first day, the coaches and organizers at Hoops changed things around a little more in line with what Mac originally envisioned.

Each of the three courts was divided in half. One focused on football, one on basketball and one was designed for the younger kids. It had a trampoline and an inflatable castle-looking structure with a slide on one wall.

The other two younger kids Fadi and I talked to said the same thing, pointing over in its direction from the football court where we were standing.

Ahmed, who works at Hoops and organized the stations on each court, told me the idea with the sport courts was to build skills. The basketball court looked like an obstacle course. There were about 10 poles set up with kids slaloming between them dribbling basketballs along one side and an equal number of pairs of small orange cones connected with poles that created a mini hurtle course for kids hopping like rabbits holding basketballs tight to their chests.

The crew at Hoops also used orange cones to help kids learn how to shoot the perfect lay-up. To the right of the hoop about a meter or so before it four cones were laid flat on the court in two lines. Run and dribble up to the cones, grab the ball and step over the first line with the right foot, left foot over the second line and shoot. “Right, left, shoot,” one of the coaches kept yelling as kids either put both feet between the cones, stopped to long to assess how to proceed or sidestepped the obstacle all together.

Over the course of the five days with stations set up, Ahmed told me they also played half-court competitive games, 5-on-5, small teams with the first to 10 winning, passing drills, shooting drills and dribbling blindfolded.
One of the boys there to play, Ahmed, 12, told me (through Fadi) his only complaint was he didn’t get to play basketball enough. The kids rotated between the basketball, football and play-time courts (the bigger kids, however, stuck to the sports).

The football court was similar to the basketball court, zig-zagging around obstacles or practicing passing, penalty kicks or headers. At one point, the littler kids were playing a game with the cones used as obstacles for ball-control drills. The cones were mid-field and the kids were to line up on the goal line. (Most of them huddled together inside the goal.)

When the coach blew his whistle, they had to run and grab a cone. There was one less cone than children, so someone was out each round. Mac and I stood and watched, surprised to see it was force over speed in the end. The faster, smaller girl made it mid-field first but dove for the cone, missing it. She was able to grab for it just as the slower girl probably 2 years her senior did. With less muscle, the faster girl’s tentative grip didn’t stand a chance as the other girl just pulled it away from her.

Overall, Mac said he was happy with the way things turned out. They brought around 150 different kids to Hoops during the five days of open court GAM3 arranged. All told, 487 kids attended (most more than once) and the folks at Hoops let them exceed the 75 participant goal that was the original plan, which they did every day except the last. On 7 July, the second day, there were 96 kids. The last day at Hoops, the kids who came were full-time residents of the two Palestinian refugee camps just south of Beirut. (Each other time, most of the kids were refugees from the fighting in the Nahr al-Bared camp in North Lebanon.)