Trent Bortz

Dr. Guenzel
ENC 1101
October 27, 2016
How Skills and Ideas Transfer From Basketball to School
Introduction
Sports are often pointed to as a great tool for children to use in order to learn about how
true competition works, and how it better prepares them for the real world when jobs and
promotions are on the line instead of a trophy. I propose that sports do much more than just this,
because they help kids develop many more valuable skills like being able to communicate with
authority better, manage time better, become a better leader, analyze situations quicker, and
choose the best course of action quickly. All of these skills are just as useful in a real world
situation like the classroom and a career.
A sport I think does a tremendous job of providing young people with these skills is
basketball. In my own personal experience, basketball has helped me learn to take better notes in
my classes, become more self-advocating, become a better leader, and communicate with my
teachers better. For this case study, I will be examining two basketball players on the East River
High School boys basketball team in Orlando, Florida, and asking them how the interactions in
the discourse community of East River basketball affects their interactions in separate, academic
discourse communities. One participant is named Elijah, and he is a sophomore who plays on
the junior varsity team, and the other is Deshay, a senior who is on the varsity team. A discourse

community is a group of people or an organization that meets a certain number of requirements

that include having common goals and having a common means of communication, (where they
provide information and feedback), using multiple genres, having specific lexis, and having
different thresholds of membership (Swales). This concept relates to East River boys basketball
because we all want to win a state championship, and we talk about practice times and plays on
Kik Messenger and GroupMe, we have jargon that only we know about, and there are threshold
levels of membership because there are three different teams, managers, and coaches.
In the following sections, I will present my methods for collecting my results, followed
by my results and a section for analyzing them, by following the format used by Marissa Penzato
during her research about fan fiction.
Methods
Both Elijah and Deshay have at least one year of experience of playing for East Rivers
program under coach Willis McPhee. After a workout at East River, I asked both of them if they
would like to be research participants. After both of them agreed, I started a group chat with
them in the messages of my phone.
The research was conducted by asking each participant a series of open-ended questions
that relate to how skills are exchanged between the East River boys basketball discourse
community and their academic discourse communities. After receiving answers from each of
them within the group chat, I wrote down specific quotes and important information they
provided me in a notebook to use for this case study.

Elijah
Elijah is a fifteen year old sophomore who lives in Orlando, but was originally from New
York City. He practices on his own at his house every day and is relatively inexperienced,
compared to other high school players. He has only played organized basketball for one season,
and coach McPhee has been his only coach. He played travel basketball this summer as well in
the Amateur Athletic Union (AAU). He participates in multiple athletic as well as multiple
academic discourse communities. He participates in the discourse communities of his classes
like English II, Algebra II, and AP World History, as well as a form of student council he
participates in at East River weekly. For athletics, he is only involved in basketball, but he is tied
to his summer AAU travel team, his trainers, and the East River program, where he is most
involved.
Elijahs Basketball Involvement
Elijah has only played one full year of organized basketball, playing the 2015-2016
Winter season for East River, and the summer season with a summer travel team. Last year, he
started for the freshman team at East River, and over the summer he was very involved with East
River basketball, coming to workouts and supporting the program by constantly coming to fund
raisers. He enjoys basketball much more than school, because it gives him an opportunity to
make more friends, and he is naturally a very competitive person. The skills or traits he
considers valuable on the basketball court include the following: being hard working, being able
to respond to criticism, being able to disguise a weakness with a strength, and being able to
maintain poise in tough situations.

Elijahs Academic Involvement

Elijah is a very studious person, and he has a 3.8 grade point average while taking all
Honors and Advanced Placement classes. He considers himself very involved in his classroom
communities, and he credits this to his mother instilling the need for him to get good grades from
a young age. Although very involved, he does not enjoy his academic discourse communities all
that much because they just tend to bore him. One thing he does enjoy about his discourse
communities is interactive learning. He enjoys playing games and participating in activities.
Skills that Elijah thinks are important to being successful in a classroom include being hard
working, being able to manage time, and being able to memorize facts and figures.
Deshay
Deshay is a seventeen year old senior who was born and raised in Orlando. He works out
at least five days of the week, and trains with a basketball specific coach at a training facility
called Orlando Hoops for at least two days of the week. He is very experienced with basketball,
and has played since the third grade on YMCA teams and in other recreational leagues. He first
played school basketball in the seventh grade for his middle school, and continued in eighth
grade. In the ninth grade, he played junior varsity at Ocoee High School, and transferred to East
River at the start of his sophomore year. He played varsity his sophomore and junior year, and
will play on the varsity team this year as well. He has had many coaches and played on a variety
of teams. He is involved in a discourse community with his trainers and the East River boys
basketball program. As for academics, he is involved with discourse communities within his
classes, which include math for college readiness (MCR), English IV, and Anatomy &
Physiology.

Deshays Basketball Involvement

Deshay has played organized basketball since the third grade, and has played high school
basketball at the junior varsity and varsity levels. At East River, he has played two years of
varsity basketball, and is starting his third. He comes to about half of the summer workouts, and
has not participated in lots of fund raisers. He enjoys basketball more than school as well
because he thinks it gives him the best chance to get a scholarship and get a college education.
For basketball, he thinks it is important to do whatever you can to win and win at all costs, give
your best effort, and to be reliable on the court.
Deshays Academic Involvement
Although not as studious as Elijah, Deshay has a grade point average over a 3.0 and puts
lots of effort into getting good grades while taking mostly honors, but some standard classes. He
considers himself extremely involved in his academic discourse communities that he participates
in through his classes, because he always does what is asked of him and volunteers to help his
teachers. He enjoys his classroom experiences more, and he says this is mostly because Im
really social and make friends in most of my classes. He thinks it is important to be hard
working, to build relationships with his classmates, and to know what is expected of him in each
class.
Inter-Relation of Skills
Elijah and Deshay both think that important skills and concepts can be easily exchanged
between their academic and basketball discourse communities. For example, Elijah said that
being hard working and being able to memorize facts and figures are important skills in the
classroom, but he also values being hard working on the basketball court, and thinks that being

able to memorize plays from a playbook or a scouting report are important in basketball. When
asked how he thought important basketball skills transferred into his school life, he said that
responding to criticism was important in his classes as well because he needs to know how to
respond to peer review and editing from his teachers. Being able to disguise his flaws is
something else that he considered important in school. Similarly to how there is more than one
way to get around a defender, there is usually more than one way to solve a problem. By
knowing which ways suit him best, he can solve problems more efficiently. He does not
consider staying poised as important in the classroom because there arent high pressure
situations every day.
Deshay finds a similar amount of correlation between his skills used in the classroom and
in basketball. He thinks it is important to be hard working on both platforms, and he thinks that
having relationships with classmates is equally as important as having relationships with
teammates, because it helps with communication on the court. When asked, he also said he
thought that knowing what your coach expects of you is important as well, even though he only
listed it for his teachers. For skills he listed that are important for basketball, like giving your
best effort and being reliable, he thinks it is important to also give your best effort in class and be
reliable not just to coaches, but also to teachers. As for winning at all costs, Deshay does not
think this applies to the classroom, because he does not think it is as competition-based, like
sports are. He thinks school is mostly self-driven, and there is not an end goal that is near,
theres nothing to win, as he says.
Analysis
Overall, I found that skills practiced through basketball are also very important in the
classroom, and classroom skills are also often implemented on the basketball court. Although

Deshay and Elijah both have different academic and athletic backgrounds, both considered
similar skills very important on the court and in their classes. The research I conducted strongly
supported my hypothesis that skills used within the discourse community of East River boys
basketball are also highly useful in academic discourse communities.