Crowley County boys basketball team hoping for victory off of the court

When Doctor James Naismith invented the game of basketball in 1891, he used peach baskets as the goals.

If you walk into the old gym in Sugar City, you wouldn’t be surprised if you were to still see peach baskets hanging in place of the modern hoop.

“We got wood for the backboards,” said boys basketball coach Kyle Hughes.

Outside the gym has the look of an old barn. Its corrugated tin exterior is matched by boarded-up windows with peeling paint.

“We’re just kind of a smaller school, kind of tight on our budgets,” Hughes said.

The latest small area income and poverty estimates by the federal government show Crowley County has over 43 percent of its residents living in poverty, making it the 10th poorest county in the nation.

“Our school doesn’t make enough money to help out our sports program,” said senior Evan Carpenter.

Carpenter is used to the worn basketballs and hand-me-down jerseys.

“We have the hustle, we just don’t have the equipment that we could use to make us better that those other schools with money and that those other bigger schools do have,” Carpenter said.

Realizing money for training equipment won’t come from the school district, the team put together its best hope for new equipment, shoes and uniforms.

“We made a video for Preparation Nation, a contest through the sporting goods company Eastbay. If you win the competition it’s $20,000 to your program,” Hughes said.

The video, appropriately titled “Old School” shows the team training with what they have, including the only piece of training equipment they can afford…two-by-four boards wrapped in towels that they push up and down the court.

“It really builds the legs,” Hughes said. “We’re headed in the right direction but a little bit of new technology like bungees would really help our program.”

It would take years of bake sales for the team to earn as much as a few online votes could give them if they win the contest.

“It would mean so much to us because we just really need the money, we need to improve our game and we feel like it would just help this program out a lot,” said senior Mason Wise.

“We want to get better, we’re going out and doing it ourselves because that’s what we want to do, we want to be the best,” Carpenter said.

You can vote here.

***UPDATE***

Many of you have contacted us about voting problems with the Eastbay website. We are trying to get answers from the company. Unfortunately they have not been very responsive. They told Jonathan the only way to get in touch with media relations is to write a letter and mail it to their New York office. Obviously, that won’t work with the deadline approaching.

Jonathan has also contacted the parent company, Footlocker, about the issues. We hope to know more soon.

If you are also having issues voting, we recommend you email the company through their website as well.

***UPDATE 12/20/14***

It appears the voting issues on Eastbay’s website have been fixed. If you haven’t been able to vote, you have until Monday.

If you still have problems, please continue to let the company know through their website.