EDITORIAL: Community basketball game warrants support

Published 9:45 am Wednesday, May 4, 2022

A community event set for this weekend aims to bring people together in the name of good fun in hopes of stemming the tide of local violence.

That’s something we should all stand and support.

On hiatus for the past couple of years due to COVID-19, the Youth Development Basketball Game returns this Saturday. The game will pit city firefighters against a group of community all-stars. 

Although there’s sure to be a fight for bragging rights, the score will hopefully be the last thing people remember once the final buzzer sounds. 

The game is all in fun, but there’s an overarching purpose — bringing facets of the community together and showing young people that there are activities out there that don’t involve the kind of violence they too often see.

As Firefighter Nekelo Knight recently put it: “The biggest thing we want to do is to get our community involved in doing something positive for our youth. We want to do everything we can do to pull them away from the bad things that have been going on.”

The game will also hopefully expose some local young people to potential mentors and new role models who can serve as examples for their lives and their futures. 

There will, of course, be bragging rights, and that’s great. But what’s even greater, however, is that these young people will be exposed to adults who care about them and they can be reassured that there are people beyond their parents in this community who are concerned about their futures. 

Last fall, we launched an ongoing series focused on community gun violence. There have been additional shootings since our reporting began, many involving young people in their teens and 20s. We know that we are not alone in grappling with this issue, many other communities are as well, and we understand that there is no one-size-fits-all solution to the problem. But what we also know is that while we search for ways to fix the problem, many young people are teetering on the brink, on the cusp of taking a wrong path while we look for the right answers. We need to take small, tangible steps and do what we can — as soon as we can — to help them along the way in making choices in their lives. No, one basketball game isn’t going to fix this complex issue, but it’s a positive step. If one young person who comes out on Saturday, meets one adult who can help steer them in a positive direction, then all is not lost. 

Who knows, maybe someone will also leave Saturday’s game thinking about becoming a firefighter or an EMT, never realizing that they were tangible career options.

Support this event and even if you don’t plan on attending, support the organizers and their efforts to show young people that there are other paths to take.  

The game is set for 7 p.m. Saturday at Baldwin High School’s Lunsford Gymnasium. Admission is $5.