The language of basketball has a few new expressions.

“You got this,” the swishing net whispers.

“You are a strong person,” reminds the rimming hoop.

“Let’s go!” the dribbling shouts.

A new program — the first such model in the nation — is launching in Colorado Springs to teach adolescents ages 11-15 how the game of basketball speaks of personal fortitude, strength and resilience.

“No one in the country has done this, and we think it’s going to work,” said Margaret Sabin, past president of Children’s Hospital Colorado in Colorado Springs, who led the program’s beginnings three years ago.

A two-year, $100,000 donation from Denver philanthropists Craig and Amy Smith is paying for Children’s Hospital professionals to train motivational health coaches to work with kids who live on the city’s south side, where there’s a high concentration of low-income households.

The adult coaches are learning how to communicate non-judgmentally, help identify stressors in the teens’ lives, encourage emotional self-regulation and play up the kids’ assets as they shoot the breeze and hoops, according to organizers.

“So they have somebody that believes in them outside of their family, somebody they can interact with, and attend enrichment gatherings and sports-development events,” said Terrell Brown, who in 2017 founded Hillside Connection. The youth-development nonprofit uses sport as a tool to foster opportunities for about 200 teens a year and will deliver the resiliency through basketball program.

The end goal is that as teens are faced with bullying, family conflict, academic slide, drugs and alcohol, boyfriend-girlfriend tension and social media, they can respond in a healthy and confident way, organizers said.

“We want kids and families to develop the mental fortitude to create their own narrative,” Brown said. “Where these kids come from, you’ve got to have a little hope, inspiration and drive to create that narrative.” 

Basketball is a good conduit for the program because it presents an even playing field, no matter the economic bracket, Brown said. The game teaches teamwork, communication, a work ethic and discipline, he said.

“We’re tough on kids on the south side of town, and that’s strategic,” he said. “We understand once they leave this 90-minute session, their life is going to be far more harder on the streets, and hopefully, when they go home, they’ll be able to make the right decisions for themselves.”

The first group of resiliency participants will start the six-week program soon, Brown said.

Pediatric mental health worsened during the coronavirus pandemic, and the aftereffects of interrupted daily routines and isolation continue to cause problems for teens nationwide, Sabin said.

“We’re in a crisis in this country and we’re not going to get out of it by having more acute services,” she said. “As we put resources into upstream innovations, we have to ask ourselves, ‘Are they making a difference?’ We’ve got to ensure what we’re doing is effective.”

Using basketball to help develop psychological resiliency — the ability to cope mentally or emotionally with a problem by avoiding negative reactions to life’s stressors — is an expansion of a pilot program, “Building Resiliency for Healthy Kids,” which Children’s Hospital started in Colorado Springs in January 2020 in local middle schools.

Now full-fledged, the prevention program has grown to be offered in seven area school districts and 25 schools, Sabin said. Coaches have worked with hundreds of sixth graders, identified by pediatricians and therapists as a prime age for embracing coping skills, she said.

Classroom participants have shown significantly reduced use of hospital emergency departments for mental health crises, said Emily Pyle, program manager.

Preliminary research indicates that resiliency skills can ward off anxiety, depression and suicide attempts, Sabin said.

Also, kids from more diverse backgrounds who initially displayed lower resiliency abilities improved enough after coaching to demonstrate the same level of resiliency as their peers, she said.

“That shows investment matters,” Sabin said.