About UC Over 35 Basketball

This group was founded in April of 2000 for the purpose of bringing the community together to get exercise on a regular basis and, at the same time, enjoy the company of neighbors and friends.  

Our primary objectives are to get exercise in an environment that minimizes the risk of injury, have fun, and provide great examples of team play and sportsmanship for our kids. 

We include players at all levels from beginner to experienced.  We are very supportive of and positive towards all players, both our own team and the opposing one.   Winning is very low on our priority list.  We keep score only because it results in us pushing ourselves a little harder to get more exercise.  We do not keep win/loss records.

Our games are year round on Sunday mornings at the Standley Park Recreation Center in University City.  We have three fourteen-week rounds each year and new teams are selected by the commissioner at the beginning of each round.  The teams are selected to achieve the greatest possible balance and at the same time, give everyone a chance to play together at some point during the year.

Greg Zinser

Commissioner

NBA article on the playoffs by Bill Simmons on the Grantland site. If this passage doesn’t hit home on the love for basketball………

Any pickup-basketball regular battles an ongoing dilemma: What's it worth to keep playing for as long as possible? If it's super-crowded and you want to stay on the court for a few games, you might suck it up and jump on a team with Pickup Carmelo or Pickup Kobe — a.k.a. a one-on-one guy who will shoot half your team's shots, only he's good enough that you might be able to ride him for two straight hours. But if it's less crowded? You take your chances with people who are fun to play with — a.k.a. unselfish guys who run the floor, know how to pass and cut, keep the ball moving, don't take stupid transition shots, and generally know what they're doing.

And ideally, this is what happens: A few times per year, you'll find the right four guys on a crowded day, everything will click, you'll turn into the '77 Blazers, and you end up laying the smack down, 2013 Heat–style, for six or seven straight.

It's just the best day you can have. It's the greatest. You limp out of there beaming, and when your wife or girlfriend asks you later that night why you're so damned happy, you can't even properly explain it. How can you explain total bliss? I love playing basketball — even now, with my body breaking down and my game decaying to alarming degrees — if only because it's one of the few places left on earth where you can connect with total strangers like that. Age doesn't matter, backgrounds don't matter, nothing matters. You have four teammates, they can be anybody, and you either know how to click with them or you don't.