Awards Beyond Athletics

Don Ruedlinger is president and founder of Youth Basketball of America (YBOA), founded in 1989 to “spread the spirit of basketball and sportsmanship” through team, tournament, camp and clinic participation. Today, YBOA serves more than 300,000 basketball players in the United States and in 23 countries throughout the world. The YBOA National Championships event draws more than 450 teams from around the world annually.

In addition to championship titles and trophies awarded to teams each year, YBOA recognizes achievements in areas beyond just skills and competition that play a vital role toward the program’s and youth’s overall success. Here, Ruedlinger describes four of those awards.

Achievement Award. This award, now in its fourth year, recognizes an adult’s dedicated service to one team for a minimum of five years. One award is given in each age group.

Academic Award. Each team in each age group can submit one player for the individual award (minimum 3.5 grade point average required), as well as the team’s overall GPA (3.0 minimum) for the team award. Five individual awards and one team award are given per age group. In addition to GPA requirements for the individual award, players are selected based upon leadership, community involvement and an essay of 50 words or less.

Humanitarian Award. Not all players are A students, but some are active outside of basketball, so we wanted to reward those efforts. The award recognizes players’ service to community, school, church, family or team; acts of kindness in clubs outside of basketball; and integrity, honesty and leadership. Currently, one award is given per age group, but we plan to expand to more awards.

Ultimate Team Parent Award. This new award will recognize the ultimate team mom (99 percent of the volunteers are moms, because dads usually want to coach) who takes care of the team paperwork, ensures player eligibility, collects fees and works with the team on pretty much everything. It’s as important a role as any.