At Timberlake, they know how to get their kicks
Stubborn donkeys may not seem like the best basketball players, but when they’ve been trained to do it all their lives, they seem to manage.
Several rousing games of donkey basketball – that’s basketball on donkey-back– at Timberlake High School on Tuesday featured temperamental donkeys but, lucky for the fans, good-natured students, parents and teachers willing to, well, make an ass of themselves (pun intended).
The event was a six-game tournament pitting parents, teachers and students against each other.
Parent Barb Puckett broke the ice in the first game by jumping off her donkey to get the loose basketball. It took her three tries – and three belly flops on the donkey’s back – to get back on the beast, much to the delight of the crowd of more than 350. When she did get back on, it took just a few minutes for her to ride under the basket and shoot the ball, scoring the first basket of the tournament.
Dribbling isn’t allowed in Donkey basketball, but the well-trained donkeys seemed to understand the game. Whether they did as they needed to do was a different story however.
It often took several minutes for players to coerce the stubborn donkeys down the court, with many wincing and digging in their heels at the slightest tug of the rope around their necks.
Senior Kelsey Hepler grabbed a loose ball with a just a few seconds left but couldn’t shoot a basket without being atop her donkey, per game rules. It took her several seconds to get back on, and she missed the shot as the crowd counted down the seconds. The seniors still won.
The next game pitted the Timberlake High School faculty versus the Timberlake Junior High School faculty. The high school faculty won, and went on to defeat the senior class in overtime 8-6. But in the end, the Spirit Lake Elementary faculty proved too much for the high school faculty. The Spirit Lake staff won the tournament, defeating the high school faculty 8-4. They were given a trophy and declared the champions.
Basketball on donkey back has a long history in the Inland Northwest and is very popular in the South. An annual game in Hattiesburg, Miss., draws hundreds each year.
“It’s been around for forever,” said 16-year-old Jamie Brennan, a junior at Timberlake. Brennan helped organize the event as part of her duties as vice president of the high school’s Club Peace, a community service group. The group is raising money to give scholarships to the school’s graduating seniors.
The donkey basketball game brought in more than $1,800, which will be split between the school and the Washington company that supplied the donkeys, Donkey Sports Inc.
The tournament was the first of its kind at Timberlake High School, and students hope it will become an annual event. Teacher Jacqui Duran, Club Peace’s adviser, got the idea after spending time in Wenatchee a couple weeks ago as a horse show judge.
“Here was this great big sign that said ‘come to the donkey basketball game,’ ” Duran said. “We decided this would be a great fundraiser. Something new and fun.”