March’s madness has dissipated into an apathetic April. The college tournament has left you with no one to cheer for. Your trip to sunny San Antonio bit the dust. Your only interest in basketball right now is to root against North Carolina’s Tyler “Psycho T” Hansborough because on Easter weekend his name received more air time than Christ’s. And all this negativity has got you in a funk of wasteful daytime drinking and hitless performances on the co-ed intramural softball field, where you wholeheartedly believe that it’s okay to blame your dribbling groundouts on the fact that the pitches are coming in too slow.
It’s time to face it: you miss basketball. You weren’t ready for it to end. Not like that. Not on Easter Sunday at your aunt’s family get together.
Explaining to your grandmother the drawbacks of losing by “just four points” is no way to end a season.
Well, fear not, basketbaholics. Weave your way past Saxby’s, down 35th street and a few blocks from the Visitation School. There you’ll find Volta Park, a paradoxical playground and Georgetown’s best site for spring outdoor basketball. This spot, surrounded by gardens and a high-traffic jungle gym, simultaneously serves as a springtime sanctuary and a caged-in torture chamber of the basketball variety.
Let me explain. First the good. Volta is the kitchen that houses the innate ingredients to titillate your roundball desires. Enter the gates of the basketball area and the sun-splashed court is clean under your high school-era Nike cross-trainer kicks. The dimples of a semi-inflated Wilson outdoor basketball meet your fingers and reassure your grip, even into your second and third games of three-on-three, after your hands are covered in a film of court grime. (Licking your fingers to get an even better grip after they’re covered in said grime is, of course, totally acceptable at Volta.) Parents with flower-patterned strollers are the only fans outside the fenced-in courts. But don’t worry, no pressure. They never stay too long after catching a whiff of not-so-flowery language spat at air balls on the other side of the wire. Death-defying acts on the jungle gym tend to win out as Volta’s more wholesome, family-friendly option.
No, Volta Ball is not your grandmother’s brand of basketball. Sure, it’s a game for friends. But make sure you really like each other, because it can get rough out there. Inside the cage, loose balls generate skinned knees and something resembling rugby scrums. And, given the skill set of most participants, loose balls are as common as rebounds and the bloodshed is not lacking. Offensive fouls are non-existent and over-the-back calls are barely an afterthought. A silky-smooth jumper won’t get you anywhere, unless you’re playing the wind, and a soft touch off Volta’s gong-like backboards tends to be as helpful as a Speedo in the Arctic. Now, if you’re stuck on the court with the dreaded double-rim, you might as well go home because your shooting percentage won’t be much higher than your grade-point average.
Yet, kids come. Kids stay. They’ll stay for several games to 11. Of course, breaks in between games are literally a matter of life and death, so they’re unanimously extended as the day wears on. But folks stay until that last-game-we-probably-shouldn’t-have-played-because-now-we-physically-can’t-walk-home game.
You’ll be hobbled, blistered and semi-conscious after a day at Volta, without a doubt. But go for the competition. Go for the fresh air. Go so that when you’re home, you can brag about that move you pulled, in that little boxed-in basketball world, when you made your best buddy look like a statue. Go despite the massive blisters and sore hamstrings that will bring you back to reality a few hours later.
Go, but for the children’s sake (and your stomach’s), maybe save the day drinking for afterwards.
