Your New Sport: Basketball

Women's Sports & Fitness, March 2000

by Danya Reich

Getting into a game was that easy. Playing wasn't. I didn't know any of the rules or how to shoot a layup, but I immediately loved the physicality of racing around the court. I smother the player I was guarding with all the energy of my newly unleashed athletic zeal and found it incredibly effective: I rendered her scoreless because she couldn't stop laughing at me. Afterward, I was as sweaty as Patrick Ewing in double overtime.

You can burn up to 500 calories during an hour of intense play, but that's not what draws me or others. "You get back to a childlike state by playing games as opposed to counting sit-ups," says Liz Stubelis, 34, a financial analyst in Boston who recently joined a weekly game. It's a full-body workout that builds strength and increases agility, adds Jennifer White, a trainer who specializes in basketball conditioning at Ironsmith Inc. in Austin, Texas. "You're constantly jumping, turning, stopping, starting and running," she explains.

Once you've acquired some basic skills (after several weekend pickup games with patient friends, I started to get the hang of it), it's time to put your hoop dreams to the test and join a league. Although these games are officially classified as "recreational," they do breed a certain amount of fanaticism. My team ended up losing the Femme Fatale finals - albeit with a respectable 51-46 score - but that hasn't kept me off the court. Nor has it stopped me from dreaming of someday bringing home one of those trophies.

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