Community Hoops, What we are About – by Evan Petty–
Experimenting is a luxury that a whole lot of people don’t acknowledge for one reason or another.
They also don’t solely choose to neglect it. It usually requires a degree of drive stirred by a passion.
Nick Welch and I met as academic “teammates” around age 12, when the Brown, Bresnahan and Kelley all funneled into the Nock Middle School. We were gangly sixth-graders.
Nick made fun of me for tucking my shirt in and we both laughed uncontrollably with our best friends during Project Heart – a week sometimes better known as “Sex-Ed.”
On the floor, we teamed up for just one season when circumstances intersected. I was a smart, slow guard playing on a pretty darn competitive middle school travel team. I could play. But I sat behind superior athletes and Matt Leavitt, who might have been the most famous point guard in Newburyport history as a middle schooler. Meanwhile, Nick was still getting used to some newly acquired height. And he had learned the game long after all of us from the travel team. Everyone knew he would become a star, he just wasn’t ready quite yet. And we were both cut!
We helped our team win the in-town championship that year in just the Newburyport Boys Basketball Association’s (NBBA) second competitive season. I would go on to pretty much plateau as a player in my new home overseas, while Nick’s game took off as a Clipper. But we remained a basketball-loving duo in a group of basketball-loving friends. And we took a shot at experimenting with a passion in a City we love.
Two years later, Community Hoops is still here and better than ever.
It was 2012 when we finished the first two years of our undergrad education. Nick played basketball and studied marketing at Emerson College and I studied journalism at Syracuse University. We both had an itch to do something more. That summer we came back home as idealistic 20-year-olds when we started working with younger basketball players in Newburyport without a price tag attached. We called ourselves Community Hoops. Not many people knew of us.
Maybe some who did were even hesitant. And we weren’t exactly shocked by any of it. But by the end of the summer, we had received enough support to give a new basketball hoop to a group of men and women we worked with from Opportunity Works, as well as improve our idea and vision. There’s room for something like Community Hoops in Newburyport.
Flash forward two years and we’re preparing to pass coaching duties on to some of Newburyport’s finest young basketball talent. Six members of Clipper Varsity Basketball teams (both men’s and women’s) make up the next generation of Community Hoops coaches.
They’ll coach an expanding player pool that grew to nearly 60 last year, and ranged from a 6-year-old to high school students. Our model will remain the same. Community Hoops raises money online and will host the 2nd annual ‘Hoop-A-Thon’ at the end of August, where participants shoot free throws to support our mission.
There’s something special about fueling another person’s passion for the game with nothing else but your own. It’s both comforting and exciting to know we have Newburyport behind our progress. Not many cities recognize the smallest of worthy ventures. But that’s something that makes Newburyport special. And Community Hoops plans to keep adding to that distinct uniqueness.
If you are interested in getting involved with Community Hoops in any way visit the website at communityhoops.net where you can get more information about supporting the cause, scheduling a lesson or inquiring about coaching.
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Evan and Nick in 2001 playing chess at Yankee Homecoming. (Photo by Eaton, 2001)