It's Bigger than Basketball

By: Steven Pham

Fully renovated court that was finished this last month.

Wichita, KS. - Recent Cal Poly University commit and Sunrise Christian Academy’s Noah Pick has been active on and off the basketball court. Pick was originally born and raised in Arroyo Grande, California, and has been playing basketball all his life. This past year Pick has been working on a ton of projects outside of playing basketball.

His first project was renovating one of the local basketball courts in his hometown. Pick teamed up with Project Backboard, the City of Arroyo Grande, and others to help renovate a court in Strother Parks. The official renovation took place on April 16th-18th this year.

The reason behind Pick’s vision to renovate the court, “started about a year and a half ago when California was on lockdown due to COVID and so the only courts that were open were outdoor and most of the outdoor courts around my neighborhood were pretty dilapidated,” Pick said. “We paused for a little bit and now it's to benefit the community and the next generation of hoopers.” Pick was able to go back home to Arroyo Grande to finish renovating the court and eventually played a tournament on the newly built court.

The renovation process, “was a pretty simple process in terms of the artwork and painting of the court that took place from April 16th to 18th,” Pick said. “I was back one weekend for spring break and we were able to get it done by Monday.” The court lines and backboards were put in after Pick finished painting the court.

The artwork was designed by Pick himself after the city of Arroyo Grande gave him some regulations that they wanted. “The city wanted the artwork to include the terrain of Arroyo Grande and have a night/day concept,” Pick said. “The design itself has four main components: the sun, the moon, stars which represent the five cities area I am from, waves for the river and beach in town, and the terrain which represents mountains, hills, farms, and sand dunes.” Trevor Weiger from Project Backboard mentored Pick on the art and painting for the different color concepts.

Pick is an incredible scholar and published his first book this past month. The book is titled ‘Free Throws in Life’ and was published on April 13th. Pick was writing this book throughout the season at Sunrise. “It was my way of giving back to basketball,” Pick said. “It is a 21-day/lesson short book that relates life and basketball with free-throw metaphors and analogies.”

The front cover of Noah Pick's first book titled 'Free Throws in Life'.

The book is 50 pages long and is currently available on BookBaby for $10. It will be released on Amazon and Barnes & Noble soon. Pick is also getting ready to work on his next project with Project Backboard in the upcoming months.

Thank you to Noah Pick for his contributions to the game of basketball on and off the court!!! He is an intelligent kid with a bright future and a love for the game of basketball. Good luck with your future projects!!!