Junior College Basketball Can Be Interesting

We live in an area of the country that has a number of junior colleges with sports programs. As a sports lover myself, I try to take my son and daughter to as many sporting events as possible, and junior college basketball is usually a good choice. It's indoors, the seating is always comfortable and junior college basketball players are typically pretty good.

The first time that I took my son to a junior college basketball game was when he was seven years old. He liked playing basketball out in the driveway, and we wanted to see what he could become one day if he kept at it. He was amazed by how tall the players were, and their athleticism. He kept asking me if I thought he would ever get to that level, and I told him that he could, but that he would have to work hard at it, because all of the young men out the court had done the same thing.

He asked why the kids were playing junior college basketball instead of for a major college program like Duke, Kentucky or Syracuse. I informed him that it could be for a variety of reasons, including that the kids were not quite to that talent level yet, did not have the grades to get into a major Division I school or that they wanted to hone their skills in the junior college basketball level before trying to go off and play major college basketball at a four-year college.

The first time that I took my daughter was when she was eight years old, and immediately she fell in the love with the sport. She loved how the junior college basketball players wore their hair in pony tails and how all of the girls worked together as a team. She did express some concerns about whether or not she would ever be tall enough to play basketball at the junior college level, and I told her that it was not really how tall she was and that what mattered the most was how much desire she had to be a good basketball player. She started playing pick-up basketball games with my son out in the driveway as well.

Junior college basketball has provided a lot of great entertainment for my children, and I have watched some great players go on to D1 and professional basketball from those ranks. It is an affordable way to have some fun on the weekend and a great way to spend some time as a family. We will continue to take advantage of the opportunity to watch basketball at the junior college level, and who knows? Maybe one day I will be watching my own son or daughter playing at that level.