From Supreme Court to basketball court: Court officers, interns game is annual event

August 1, 2012 By Raanan Geberer Brooklyn Daily Eagle
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SMALLposter_Basketball%20Game_1272_001_1.jpg
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On Wednesday, Aug. 9, at 1 p.m., court officers from the Kings County Supreme Court will face off against student interns in the 17th annual Court Officers vs. Student Interns Basketball Game.

Every year until now, the court officers have won against the young interns. But the interns hope the fact that, for the first time, the game will be played indoors — at the gymnasium of the Urban Assembly School for Law and Justice, 283 Adams St. — will break the jinx.

According to Supreme Court senior management analyst Izetta Johnson, who supervises the internship program, the interns are between 16 and 24 years old and include both high school and college students.

Most come to the court through the Summer Youth Employment Program, although a small number are volunteers.

“They’re a very diverse group of young people, from all parts of Brooklyn,” she said. “For some of them, it’s their first work experience.”

In three of the last four games, the interns led at halftime, but each year, the court officers outplayed the interns in the final minutes to pull out a narrow victory once again.

Johnson told the Eagle that one reason the court officers may have consistently won the games is that they outnumber the interns and can consistently rotate their players throughout the game. By contrast, she said, as the game progresses, “my guys are all sweating.”

In addition to the fact that the game is being played indoors now, it will be different in another way. The interns’ team now has one female student, and this, she said, may spur the court officers to bring some of their female colleagues onto the court.

In the past, when the game was played at Tillary Park at the height of the summer, it attracted approximately 50 to 100 spectators. Now that it’s being played in an indoor gym, organizers hope that more people will attend.





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