Ball is life.

We’ve all heard this phrase from guys around the area. They spend every minute of every day thinking and dreaming about basketball. They fall asleep in class and imagine themselves playing for the best of the best, and scoring that game-winning buzzer-beater.

But where can they go to make their dreams a reality?

Unless you’re on the school basketball team, it can be tough to find a gym to practice or shoot around at, and with the high school season still going on, it might be a while before our gym opens up again. There’s the court by Pohick library, there are courts inside schools, and maybe a hoop or two obscured by trees in the middle of some park, but none available anywhere near WS.

There’s actually a spot right next to the tennis courts currently open that just has an unused trailer and maybe some parking spots for workers’ trucks. Near it is where ambulances have come to fill up on gas, and it’s not a widely used area. I feel that it would be the perfect spot for our own outdoor basketball court.

Think about it: one blacktop basketball court in our own backyard will keep kids off the streets, keep them motivated to work hard, and provide a clean, drug-free zone for students to hang out. It’s been said before that “idle hands are the devil’s playthings,” but I’m not sure many of us understand what that means. It means that when we have nothing to do or to keep us busy, we will become more inclined to participate in activities that are inappropriate or illegal.

The school can afford to purchase Smart Boards, upgraded vending machines, nice benches, and an entirely new outdoor eating area, not to mention all the net books they recently added to the list of rarely used technology. If they can afford all these things students hardly like, much less make use of, I don’t think it’d be too much to ask for them to build us a new court.

All we need to start off the process is a 30×30 foot flat piece of land, and hey we have that! The perfect space is already available, it shouldn’t be too hard to appropriate the funds, and students would love the new addition.

The school is already in the process of being renovated, there’s no reason not to add something for fun rather than learning for once.