More than 11 years ago, PCF changed its focus to work mostly through schools and other organizations (rather than with families directly) in order to support our youth. And one of the first schools we contacted was Emlen Elementary in East Mt. Airy.

During our first meeting with them, they mentioned that they desperately wanted a full basketball court and that a company had donated a brand new “goal” (post/board/hoop) but that the District had not been able to install it for years. Eager to build a relationship with the school, we volunteered to install that new post/board/hoop, which together with the existing ancient one in their school yard, got them their full court. That project also laid the foundation for our ongoing partnership with Emlen Elementary.

Many years later, during the COVID pandemic, the School District removed all hoops from their backboards throughout the City. However, when it came time to put them back up, some of the hoops got mixed up and they were unable to reinstall some of the ancient ones. Since we had installed the other hoop at Emlen already, we decided to purchase and install a replacement basketball system in order to get the full court functional again.

PCF proceeded to remove the old one, including getting a scrapper to remove the old heavy, bulky post and board over the weekend, and purchased a brand new system. We dug a deep hole, poured nearly 1,000 pounds of concrete and then installed the new unit a week later.

We had barely pulled the protective plastic off the new backboard when the kids out for recess in the yard started using it already. And now that it has been up for a while, it is often used by Emlen kids during school hours and neighborhood kids after hours. It brings us joy to watch people using it any time we drive by the school!