Bankshot - sports for everybody

tIn his article, "The Bankshot Conception of Universal Design," Dr. Reeve Brenner says some things about sports and differently-abled people that explain a lot of the passion behind the Junkyard Sports idea. It's written in support of an other "equipment-based" solution called "Bankshot."

Tennis is exclusionary and conducing to separate-but-equal at its most extreme. It is possible for wheelchair athletes to play against each other on that court. It is possible for able-bodied people to play against each other on that court. But even able-bodied people can not all play tennis on the same level. A tennis player must find the very small sliver of the population with whom to play. The wheelchair athlete cannot play with the able-bodied except artificially in organized pre-arranged circumstances – but never spontaneously.

It's the same vision of "sports for everybody" that I was describing when I wrote "Extra Special Olympics." Bankshot is a working, challenging, cross-ability solution that combines miniature golf with a series of basketball and/or tennis and maybe even pitching goals.

Bankshot basketball is a new game of skill and challenge that is often described as a "mini golf, but with a basketball." Players of all ages and abilities, even disabled participants, proceed through a course of angled, curved and non-conventionally configured brightly colored backboards, banking shots off the Bankboards(TM) and through the rims... Bankshot is non-aggressive and entirely inclusionary.

A Bankshot course consists of a varying number of stations-depending upon the size of the court-each with a uniquely shaped Bankboard. Each Bankshot requires a different banked shot to score. Some shots demand carroms off two backboards, some are ricochets and one diabolically maddening shot has three backboards and two rims. Players use a scorecard to track their score as they shoot increasingly difficult shots at each of the stations.

And it's a better world because of it.