by Cassie Florido

What I thought was just a normal play in a CYO basketball game, quickly turned into the complete opposite. As the opposing team’s point guard dribbled the ball down the court, like any other play, I guarded the player. I was completely oblivious to what was going on behind me until I heard one of my teammates say, “What the heck.”

As I turned around, I saw four members of the other team sitting on the ground. Just sitting there. Laughing.

For a second, I was shocked and then after the initial shock I turned back around, stole the ball from the laughing point guard and went and scored a layup.

In all of my 13 years of playing basketball, this is pretty high on the list of strangest things I have experienced. But in CYO basketball, these kind of strange occurrences are nothing new.

While many high school basketball players make the choice to play for their school, even more high school players make the choice to find a team and play CYO. Most of the teams are just girls who decided to get a bunch of friends together and go play some basketball every now and then.

High school CYO teams are for two kinds of people. One, the people who have played basketball before but choose not to play for their school. Two, people who have never played basketball in their life and want to have some fun with their friends. Both of these groups make CYO competitive, yet entertaining.

Probably one of the up sides to CYO is not having to deal with grueling practices. Some teams don’t even have practices. While my CYO team chooses to have practices from time to time, we usually end up shooting half court shots, jamming out to music, and playing knockout or pig. As much as I LOVED running sprints for half of practice, I am pretty sure I won’t miss those grueling practices.

I’m not kidding when I say during one of our “practices” we ended up playing football the entire time. So, I guess you could say we are hard working. Just maybe in the wrong sport.

The best part of CYO is obviously the games. Many of the teams’ plays are not really plays at all. Sometimes the effort to “fake out” the other team just ends up in both teams laughing and wondering what is going on.

One time, a team joined arms and formed a huddle around the girl with the ball and “protected” her as she dribbled down the court and shot the ball. She missed. But I give them props because the only way we could have gotten the ball is by fouling them. So, in a way, it was actually a pretty good play. But I don’t think we’ll be seeing it run anytime soon in the NBA.

As someone who has played CYO basketball for two seasons now, I am telling everyone that if they have even a little bit of desire to play basketball, but not as competitive as high school teams, you should definitely play CYO. While some teams are serious about the games, don’t worry if you aren’t the best at basketball. Anything goes in CYO basketball.

CYO is a great way to stay active, stay involved with basketball, and actually enjoy the sport, as it should be.

Let’s not forget going out to ice cream after the games with your team. That’s probably one of the best parts of CYO basketball.