Basketball helps us handle life’s bounces

I am, by a wide margin, the worst basketball player among the Coach-Mentors at Cambridge Basketball Lab. Many are collegiate players, and my nine-year-old son Ravi happily reminds me they could all beat me. What I can do, though, is build a community where kids from across Cambridge come to know one another through basketball. As executive director of Cambridge Basketball Lab, I call that social cohesion: the trust and belonging that hold a city together. I first felt its power on the basketball court, and it shaped who I became.

My start in sports was a program called Shoot Straight at CRLS, run by then-Cambridge Rindge and Latin School head coach Mike Jarvis. My coaches included high schooler Lance Dottin, a couple of years shy of playing football for the University of Michigan. Most of the kids in that gym were strangers to me at first. By the end of the season, they were my friends.

I’ve coached basketball at CRLS for 23 years. Four years ago, I wrote the plan for Cambridge Basketball Lab, a free mentorship and skills program for Cambridge kids. The idea came at an odd time. I was undergoing treatment for advanced stage three colon cancer, out on medical leave, and not working 50+ hours a week for the first time in my adult life. During this window, it was important for me to look forward and be full of hope. Cambridge Recreation Department took a chance on me and we piloted the concept that summer. Now also in partnership with Cambridge Public Schools and based at Putnam Avenue Upper School, the Lab has served 488 Cambridge youth in its first three years, hosted more than 8,000 workouts, and provided 12,000 hours of mentorship and basketball skill development.

We often talk about summer learning loss, but less about the loss of connection and opportunity. Families with financial means fill their kids’ summers with camps, travel teams, and trips. Families without this privilege often don’t have anywhere for their kids to go. That gap is why I co-founded the Cambridge WINS Sports Equity Sponsorship program with my longtime friend Joe Bradlee and the Cambridge Community Foundation (CCF).

Since its inception in 2022, Cambridge WINS has backed more than 60 coaches and organizations across the city, including 18 programs that reached over 2,500 kids this summer alone. Sponsorships have run from $500 to $1,000, enough to keep the cost of a roster spot or a uniform from deciding who gets to play. Some of the people we’ve supported are Deondre Starling, who runs Scholars Before Athletes and won a CCF Imagined in Cambridge! Social Innovation Award for it, and Kenny Cooper, who is building a similar program around youth football.

I’ve watched the connection gap start to close. Two summers ago, two girls who’d recently arrived from Chile showed up at Cambridge Basketball Lab having never touched a basketball and not knowing anyone in the gym. They came because it was free and close to where they lived. By the end of the summer, they were friends with many of the kids in the program and went from not knowing what a jump shot was to being invited to try out for a travel team.

Two children can grow up a mile apart in Cambridge and live very different lives. Research led by Harvard economist Raj Chetty found that children whose friendships cross economic lines are more likely to move beyond their parents’ socioeconomic circumstances. Simply sharing space was not enough. Genuine connection mattered.

I’ve spent 23 years watching sports facilitate these friendships on the court at CRLS, and now another four years building them at Cambridge Basketball Lab. I have seen how sports programming creates the conditions for friendship, which produces social cohesion. Social cohesion and economic mobility are closely tied. CCF’s strategic plan is built on that principle, and social cohesion is what Cambridge WINS aims to nurture. My dream is for WINS to get bigger, with more coaches getting the kind of early support that Deondre, Kenny, and I did. Nelson Mandela famously said that sport has the power to change the world. I’m excited to start with changing Cambridge.

My son Ravi has been out there on the court, too, over the past few years. I don’t know what his Cambridge story will be, but I know it’s starting on a court with other Cambridge kids, the way mine did. Many of the friends he makes don’t look like him or live like he does, but they’re having fun together and learning from one another. Let’s all work to make that happen for every kid in this city. Sports is a powerful way to help kids to build community and feel like they belong, and to create opportunities that their parents didn’t have.

Meyersohn is executive director of Cambridge Basketball Lab.

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