We over me!

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
“We over Me” was the battle cry as the boys broke their huddles in last Saturday’s AAces basketball game. According to the organization’s director, Tamara Allen, the mantra embodies the goal of the after school youth basketball program in its inaugural season.
“The kids are playing like one big team. We want them to learn sportsmanship and know that all of the kids are on their team, whether they are wearing different color jerseys on game day or not,” Allen nodded. “Our aim is to teach the kids fundamentals and instill in them the confidence to play the game, and also to instill a love of the game itself.”
Newcastle has long offered youth sports activities through AAU and other such programs for volleyball, football, wrestling, soccer and swimming, but basketball has never been among the sports with a program for all local young people.
Though intramural, recreation and traveling basketball teams have existed and competed, the opportunity for participation on these teams has been limited due to available space on teams or because participation is cost prohibitive for some families.
Allen and the AAces staff launched the after school program this year in order to fill the gap created by the lack of an all-encompassing basketball program by offering the opportunity to the youth of the community.
Not only is it hoped that this will provide early skill development and serve as a feeder into the middle school and high school programs later on, but according to Allen, it also provides positive parental involvement for the students involved.
An influencing factor in fostering parental involvement is that AAces has been awarded a grant which requires that as part of the stipulations for receiving the money. 
“We’ve been talking a great deal about positive parent engagement, and how to foster that in an ongoing way for the purposes of the grant,” she began. “We’ve done a lot of one-stop-shop types of programs where we’ve had parents come in for an evening to do a project with their child, but then they leave and it’s over. While those are very amazing workshops, we were looking for an opportunity for the parent involvement to be ongoing.”
The program began the second week of January with 24 girls and 12 boys from the third grade to the sixth taking part. Since then, word has spread and the numbers have grown to 49, with 33 girls and 16 boys.
“We did an open enrollment this year since the program is just getting started,” Allen began. “We had good numbers to start and then those kids started talking to their friends about the fun they were having, and we got several more, so that was awesome.”
While AAces is the organization sponsoring the program, the running of it is entirely on the parents. Parents are coaching the four girls and two boys teams, they are in charge of running the scorers table, officiating the games, helping with concession stands for the game, and are there supporting their kids during the games.
“For our grant, it’s amazing how much support we have gotten from our parents,” Allen nodded. “It’s even more awesome for the kids to know their parents are there supporting them.”
The teams began competing at the beginning of February and will continue until the end of March, with games every weekend here in Newcastle. 
While the contests are competitive, the program is structured such that the teams are dynamic, changing personnel each week, and are put together to be as competitive as possible. 
“Our goal is to teach the kids the fundamentals of the game,” Allen explained. “Yes, we have a scoreboard because competitive spirit is an important skill to teach, but we also want to build the skills needed to play basketball in a healthy way that can translate as they progress through the system, and they won’t have to relearn them in middle school and high school.”
By keeping team membership dynamic, players also learn to play with many others rather than a select few, which forces them to use the skills they are learning in order to achieve success. 
That the teams are indeed competitive with one another was evident on Saturday as the three games were all tight, hard-fought battles with the boys’ contest going into overtime after a late game comeback by the white team.
In keeping with March Madness, the program will host an end of the season tournament at the end of March. At the moment, Allen is unsure what format the tournament will take as other spring athletic programs will be underway at that time, therefore definitive numbers of available players are not yet known. 
“We have been very pleased with how much participation we have gotten from the kids, and how much support we have gotten from the parents,” Allen smiled. “The kids really seem to be enjoying it and having a good time, so we hope to be able to keep it going next year.”