Some Renewed Faith in Our Future, Courtesy of a Kids’ Basketball Team With No Patience for Gender Discrimination
Could you do with a little burst of renewed faith in the world today? Of course you could. Well, this should help with that. Because if children are our future, as they say, then this is a great reminder that sometimes children can be really, supremely awesome.
A fifth grade basketball team at St. John the Apostle Parish School in New Jersey just unanimously voted to forfeit their season, rather than the alternative of dropping the female members of the team.
The team consists of nine boys and two girls, most of whom have been playing together for years. But apparently co-ed teams are only allowed through the fourth grade, a rule that the team didn’t seem to have even heard of before being told their only options were to boot the girls or forfeit their wins of the ten games they’d already played that season.
The parents and coaches let the kids decide what they wanted to do, and when asked for a show of hands for who wanted to keep the team together, all 11 went up.
When one of the coaches reiterated that this meant the team’s season would be over and they’d forfeit their previous wins, one boy responded with a very simple, straightforward “It doesn’t matter.”
Because yeah. It really doesn’t. Sure, maybe that’s just some young apathy talking, or maybe these kids really don’t care at all about an league team or rankings or any of that, but rather about the team they’ve spent years working and bonding with. And maybe gender doesn’t even factor into any of that for these kids.
According to KTLA, now that these kids are out of the official league, they still gather for scrimmages against each other, playing jerseys which read #Unitygames. And yes, it is unusually dusty in here today, wouldn’t you say?
(via Mashable, image via YouTube)
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