Content on this webpage is provided for historical information about the NIH Clinical Center. Content is not updated after the listed publication date and may include information about programs or activities that have since been discontinued.
The annual national Bankshot basketball tournament presented a “courage and good sportsmanship” award for the first time, in August.
This award—the Arielle Anacker award is named for a Clinical Center pediatric patient.
Rabbi Reeve Brenner, the NIH Jewish chaplain, serves as the national commissioner of Bankshot basketball; knowing this connection helps explain how the award came about. “Arielle, at only 11-years old, is a frequent Clinical Center patient,” said Rabbi Brenner. “She is a terrific kid who sets a wonderful example of courage, fortitude, and optimism.” He also describes the young Florida resident as having admirable strength of character and good cheer.
Bankshot, as Sports Illustrated said in 1991, is “a game that mixes basketball, billiards, miniature golf, and fine art.” Dr. Brenner invented the sport about 20 years ago so a wheelchair-bound cousin could join her family in a recreational activity. A Bankshot course features regular basketballs and hoops but uniquely-shaped backboards for “banking shots” at up to 18 different stations. Local examples of Bankshot courts can be found at the Rockville Municipal Swim Center and at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington, also in Rockville. [See the website http://www.bankshot.com/ for more information about this nonaggressive, inclusionary, and—to date—not-for-profit sport.]
Some 50 wheelchair participants joined at least a hundred other players in the twelfth annual Bankshot national tournament in Gloucester County, New Jersey, on Aug. 12.
Participants ranged from great-grandparents to children, with one player coming from as far away as Korea.
The first winner of the Arielle Anacker award was a young Bethesda resident, Akinyi Shapiro. She received this award “in recognition of exemplary conduct on and off the Bankshot court.”
—by Linda Silversmith