Confidence and joy: New basketball players thrilled with gift of shoes

Eleven-year-old Landon’s new shoes were sleek, black with a magenta sheen, winged with electric green and bright blue.

Best of all, said the Whittier Elementary School fifth-grader to his LINC program Caring Communities Coordinator Wesley Cunningham, the shoes will “help me with my handles.”

“Help you with your handles?” Cunningham said, laughing.

And Landon is showing what he means out on the gym floor, crossing over with the basketball in his hands, spinning, leaping and shooting.

This is the confidence and joy LINC Athletic Director Jason Ervin wanted to inspire when LINC teamed up with community and business partners to gift more than 60 shoes to boys and girls in Whittier, Faxon and Melcher elementary in the Kansas City Public Schools.

As Landon would explain later during a break, better handles means better control of the basketball. “Whenever I slide,” he said, looking down at his shoes, “I won’t slide as much or I won’t slide at all. Like when I’m making a basketball move and I stop to get a shot, it’s going to be probably easier.”

Over the past year, LINC has been expanding its free athletics programs across its 44 after-school sites to promote healthy lifestyles and give LINC students opportunities to benefit from coaching, training and league games that otherwise might not be available to them.

At Whittier, in Kansas City’s Northeast neighborhood, many of the students are immigrants, new to the country and new to basketball.

“It’s a learning thing for all of us,” said David Hickman, the coach for LINC’s boys and girls teams at Whittier and the CEO of the Hoops for Growth basketball program. “I’m learning too.”

And that’s what is particularly fun about it, Cunningham said, “just to see the excitement on their faces and seeing how much they’re putting into it to make it a success.”

LINC had already provided the equipment, the coaches and jerseys. But many of the children at Whittier and other LINC program schools didn’t have basketball shoes.

So Ervin went in search of partners.

Several were eager to help, he said. Supporters in providing the shoes have included the Kansas City Chiefs Ambassadors, the Dorothy J. Foundation, Davis Auto Repair and Tow, Wise Choice Medicare Agency, RC Landscape Service, RG Insurance LLC, the Puma stores at the Legends in Kansas City, Kan., and Nebraska Crossings in Gretna, Nebraska.

The support sends a wonderful message to the students and the community, said Whittier Principal Phillena Layne.

She’s excited by “the confidence boost” that the students get “knowing that the community is behind them and supporting them as they tackle the challenges ahead of them, not only on the basketball court but also in the academic setting.”

“We can’t say ‘Thank you’ enough,” she said. “We truly appreciate it.”