Basketball Season Ends on Slam Dunk

PAL basketball ended its season with a slam dunk, having signed up 63 teams to play, the most in PAL history. This year’s basketball season was an example of great teamwork, involving some 68 volunteer PAL coaches, 19 Rec & Park coaches, dozens of referees, the city’s Rec & Park Department, PAL — and the kids, more than 600 of them. Together, they created a program with a lot of hustle and energy.

Will Watkins, who has coached a PAL team for four years and this year coached the Warriors, a fifth grade boys team which won the championship in its division, calls it the most successful year to date.

“We won every game, which was a lot of fun,” he said. “A game or two may have been a little one-sided, but for the most part everyone did a pretty good job. The games were pretty competitive.”

Altogether there were 10 winning teams in age groups ranging from third grade up through middle school. (You can view the winners here.)

The PAL league runs from the beginning of October through the end of November. Games are played on Monday, Thursday and Friday evenings, with start times ranging from 4:00 to 7:30.

The PAL league is very deliberately timed to precede the winter basketball seasons run by organizations such as Catholic Youth Organization, Amateur Athletic Union, and various schools.

Watkins says he’s very pleased with the way PAL runs the league. It helps his kids get “warmed up” for the subsequent season. Watkins coaches a couple of CYO boys’ teams at St. Anne’s School in the Sunset.

He started with PAL four seasons ago. “I was basically just looking for a lead for the seventh grade boys to get warmed up and play together for upcoming CYO season.”

Joanna Doyle, who runs the program for PAL, says this year is PAL’s most successful since she’s started running the program a few years ago.

“I think we did a better outreach push to SF Unified, pulling from teams we had in previous years and letting them know hey, it’s time for basketball to start.” She says PAL also reached out to all the CYO schools.

One drawback this year, however, is there was a shortage of referee. Somehow PAL made it through the season with enough refs, but they definitely would like to recruit more referees for next year.

Doyle also praised the partnership with the city.

PAL basketball is run in cooperation with the San Francisco Rec & Park Department. The department provides coaches as well as gym space at nine locations throughout the city.

A successful basketball program is dependent on having available gyms, and it isn’t always easy to find gyms that are open and available at convenient times for children.

Doyle says the great thing about the Rec & Park gyms is they are all over the city. “You can’t live too far away without there being a gym participating with us,” Doyle notes.