The College Basketball Experience

While enjoying some time here at the parental unit's house, we went into Kansas City today. Scienceguy has a field trip coming up this week with 100 Middle Schoolers, and he needed to go check out the place before the adventure next week. So, we headed out to "The College Basketball Experience" located in Downtown Kansas City.

My family has been following College Hoops since the Jayhawks won the champtionship back in 1988. We have cheered on the Jayhawks for the past 20 years. And, of course, we have spent a fair amount of time yelling at the players as they made mistakes. Well, after today, I have a whole new respect for what those college kids do.

The College Basketball Experience is found in the Power and Light District in Kansas City. I thought it was going to be a museum, because that's how it was explained to me this morning. Well, it's not exactly a museum. While it does have the College Basketball Hall of Fame in it, it has some hands-on activities that give you a sense of how challenging college basketball really can be.

We entered and the first station we came to was a free-throw station. You have one minute to make as many free-throws as you can. I scored 7. Not bad, but then before me a kid scored something like 18. Onto the next station... The next station was a three-shot station. Basically you took 3 balls at each station and shot them from three different parts of the court. And, it was from quite a way out. I tell ya what, I didn't make one shot! I felt like I was really bad! But, at the same time, I didn't care. It was all part of the experience. The next station was a station where you were to pass the ball to players on the wall. I did pretty well on it, but I didn't have anyone guarding me at the time. How do those kids do it with people guarding them? The next station was a slam-dunk station. Yeah, right, with the limp, I didn't slam it, I just shot it. :-) It was fun and it made me appreciate the students who can slam-dunk the ball up high in the air when I couldn't do it with the hoop significantly lowered! There was another station where you were given about 7 seconds to make a shot from an assigned place on the court. I didn't make one shot on that one. It definitely gave me the feel for what the kids are able to do with other players around. There was another free-throw station where you had (I think) 7-ish seconds, and if you made one, you could shoot another just like in real basketball. I missed that too!

Then we went downstairs. The first station we came to was basically skee-ball, but basketball style. You had 60 seconds to make as many close shots as you could. This was very similar to the basketball games you see in arcades where you shoot and the balls come right back to you. I shot 47%! Not bad. Okay, okay, it's not like I'm headed to be a ball player, but it was fun!

There were other stations there, but my favorites are the ones I already shared about. At the end, there is a 30 minute film about the history of College Basketball that is very good. I learned a great deal about the sport by watching the film. And at the very end, you get to walk through the Hall of Fame.

I realize that just by reading this I am not doing the whole experience justice. However, if you're a college basketball fan, I HIGHLY recommend The College Basketball Experience to you. I can tell you it was great to gain a perspective on what those kids do, and I'll be less quick to judge them now when they miss a shot. For $10, I had a GREAT time.

Later!