This year my family finally moved into our own home. We had been living in apartments for years and this year since the COVID-19 Pandemic allowed housing prices to fall and interest rates to fall we were able to move into a great home. The best part is that it came with a basketball goal pole installed in the driveway. Now even though I have a stoma I certainly still love to play basketball. It has been a part of my life since I was basically born. Basketball in the midwest is something you are born into and is a must-learn sport for all people. Now, I have played basketball in High School and intermediate basketball in College and absolutely love it. Even when I ended up getting an ostomy I didn’t give it up. In fact, I used my ostomy to push me into learning how to get the best gear possible so I could play basketball again.
This new home though gave me a new shot at getting back into it even more. I saw the pole had no backboard and the screw holes on this pole were created for all goals and backboard from the ’70s. So this meant that I either had to find a great backbaord from 50 years ago or try and make my own. That is the idea that I ended up going with and I figured it would honestly be easier and much less expensive to make my own basketball goal than to find one that still worked well from the ’70s. Plus this was a good time to do some work with my younglings and teach them a few things about doing things the hard way.
So once I measured out the holes for the bolts in the pole and backboard frame I decided to pick the size of the basketball goal that we wanted. I know that a full-size basketball goal is huge and 6 feet wide. That is a lot of space and since our driveway is really long but not super wide it may look a bit weird. So instead I went for the intermediate gorilla goal basketball size. I figured that the size frame would be perfect for our home and allow me to be able to teach my kids how to play basketball and learn a lot of life lessons early on in life. Teamwork, failing, and also playing with medical injuries is a huge lesson. I can teach them to never give up even when it is a little harder and just by having a stoma I can do that.
So I ended up picking up five 5 foot long pieces of wood and started to get the goal looking right. We picked up a rim from the Facebook Marketplace and all in all the cost of the wood, rim, and stain were all about 50 bucks. This is a cool thing to do because I found some plans on Pinterest on how to create a goal for free and it is going to be not only a functional goal for less but will look like it costs 500. It is going to be a custom stained and awesome looking wood backboard and will actually raise the property value of our home as well.
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