My parents call it the best investment they ever made. No, it wasn’t testing the stock market, purchasing a mini van, or investing in our college educations. It was something far different…

They installed a basketball hoop.

My family stands underneath the basketball hoop during the same year it was installed—1994.

On this date 30 years ago, my dad and a couple of his friends worked together to erect a basketball goal in the driveway of our childhood home. The trio labored to put the hoop together and plant it in cement on one side of my parents’ long and curvy driveway.

It was a rather ceremonious day as my siblings and I each pressed down with our right hands on a portion of that wet cement, thereby securing our handprints and legacies for decades to come. As it was technically my early birthday present, the honor was bestowed on me to make the first basket.

Beau placed his hand in the imprint left by my hand on this date 30 years ago.

It was the first of many.

That basketball hoop truly was a game changer for the Reser family. We played on it for hours and hours and hours. Time we could have otherwise spent indoors was transferred to our driveway where we “hooped it up” with ourselves, extended family, friends, and the whole neighborhood.

My friends, brother, and I pose underneath our basketball hoop during one of my birthday parties in the mid-90s.

I remember feeling a lot of pride when my dad installed our hoop. We had purchased an easily adjustable goal that allowed us to set it at regulation height (10 feet), bring it all the way down to seven feet for beginners, or set it anywhere in-between to test our hops. It also featured a glass backboard that seemed to give our “court” a level of prestige that the basketball hoops in my friends’ driveways did not.

We obviously loved posing with the hoop 😂. Just an awkward photo with my siblings as we hold our basketballs.

As I alluded to, the time devoted to playing hoops in our driveway can’t be quantified. Simply, I can’t begin to add up the thousands of hours spent on “Reser Court” (as we affectionately called it). From one-on-one battles to three-on-three skirmishes to HORSE showdowns to Twenty-One slugfests to dunk contests to Bump rounds to long summer days of just shooting hoops…the ball never stopped bouncing on our driveway.

Just taking a break from the action back in the day.

Did we always play nicely? Heck no. Fights broke out every now and then, score disputes arose, and my mom would occasionally have to clear the court and send everyone home. But for the most part, we had so much clean fun just playing basketball. Did my parents ever become annoyed with the constant bouncing of the basketball that would radiate from outside and echo inside the house? Hardly. I think they were just thankful that they had unlimited time to enjoy the house to themselves without kids hogging the TV and eating all the snacks.

Playing some basketball with my childhood best friend, Jordan Brink, at some point when we were either in middle school or early high school.

After my siblings and I left the house, I know Reser Court went through some lonely years. That’s not the case any longer. Grandchildren now test out their skills on the hoop. In fact, Sloan, who once made 50 shots in one afternoon while staying with grandma and papa, is the age I was when the hoop was installed—7. And, just as interesting, on today’s 30th anniversary of the hoop installation, I am the same age my dad was when he worked with his buddies to make our basketball dreams come true.

Reser Court now belongs to a new generation and these two are part of it.

I know I write a lot about meaningless anniversaries in an attempt to be humorous and to generate content. This isn’t one of those. I absolutely love that hoop in my parents’ driveway and am so thankful that my parents gave into my pleas to install it. That a new generation now gets to enjoy it is icing on the cake. Thanks to the hundreds who have played with us on Reser Court. SWISH! Don’t Blink.