Little Hoopsters pack Bigfork gym

Weeks before the high school basketball

team started tryouts, the gymnasium in Bigfork was filled with the

sound of children dribbling basketballs on Saturday mornings.

The young athletes, who will continue

to play through Dec. 4, are part of the Bigfork Little Hoopsters

program.

Now in its second year, Bigfork Little

Hoopsters teaches kids in kindergarten through fourth grade the

fundamentals of basketball and gives them an arena to use those

skills. This year 136 kids are taking part in the program. That is

an increase of about 10 kids from last year, which required program

organizer Brenda Jordt to add one additional team for a total of 15

teams. The increase was in the third- and fourth-grade age group,

which is where the extra team was added.

Other than the additional team, Jordt

said nothing was changed for the program’s sophomore year.

“I’m just personally more organized

this year than last year because it’s my second year doing it,”

Jordt said.

That stability is a good thing,

especially since most of the kids in the program are returning from

last year and the response Jordt received from the first season was

positive.

“I’ve had great feedback from the

parents, and the kids from last year say they were looking forward

to it starting up this year. That’s awesome,” Jordt said.

“Everybody I talked to said it was a huge success. Plus it stays

right here in Bigfork, so the parents don’t have to go up to

Kalispell. I also heard that even last year, in our first year,

that we were more organized than the programs up north.”

One of the secrets to success of the

program is the high school students who volunteer to coach the

youngsters.

“All the younger kids just love having

all the high school kids coaching,” Jordt said. “That’s been a big

feedback. It’s good for the high school kids to do it too. It gives

them some responsibility. They have to make phone calls and take

care of things for their team, and those are life-long skills.”

There is one male and one female high

school kid assigned to each team, which are also mixed gender. The

kids on each team range in age from either kindergarten through

second grade or third and fourth graders.

“It’s a little bit of an age difference

between a 5 year old and an 8 year old, but most of these kids have

never ever played basketball before so it isn’t too big of an

issue,” Jordt said.

Although the high school kids are in

charge of teaching and coaching their teams, they are not alone in

guiding the young athletes. Bigfork High School head girls

basketball coach Mark Hansen and head boys basketball coach Paul La

Mott start off each of the hour-long sessions by teaching the

participants some basic skills.

Hansen and La Mott also help oversee

the games that the Little Hoopsters teams play against each other

after the teachings.

“I get parents calling me saying, ‘My

kid has never played basketball but they want to do this.’ I tell

them, ‘Perfect, that’s why Paul and Mark go over all the

fundamental skills with them,’” Jordt said.

Little Hoopsters has been taking place

in the high school and middle school gym from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m.

each Saturday for the past five weeks.

However, it was scheduled to be held

Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. just in the high school gym, but

since the Vikings football team was hosting playoffs each week,

adjustments had to be made.

After the championship football game,

the remainder of the sessions, which conclude this weekend, were

moved to the originally scheduled time.