A current NBA coach helped launch the program during his undergrad days at Penn. The league shut down for a while, but now it has been rebooted.
Quader Brown-Wilson is surrounded by happy teammates after his free throws at the end of a game gave his team a victory in the Penn-West Philadelphia Basketball League at Lea Elementary School.The Penn-West Philadelphia Basketball League, a program for middle-schoolers that consisted of eight teams run by Penn students, began its operation nearly 20 years ago with a link to a current NBA coach.
The reborn league held its first games a little over a year ago, with the spring matchups acting as a trial run for the program. Kelly was focused on trying to get the league going again in the fall, but she said, “it wasn’t until Marquese walked in the door that we had the talent we needed to make it happen.”
“It means everything,” he said. “I used to always tell myself, ‘I wish I had me when I was growing up.’ So now it’s a great opportunity to be that to a lot of our kids. … Just to be able to introduce them to basketball, which is the sport I love.”Until this past season, Taylor Jenkins of the Memphis Grizzlies was the only current NBA head coach not to play college basketball.
The league also expanded past basketball. Jenkins and the other Penn students helped tutor the kids, talked with them about what was going on in their lives, and hosted the children on campus to give them an idea of what was beyond West Philadelphia.
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