The Allentown Department of Parks & Recreation and long-time coach Brittni Kholi are gearing up for the eleventh Queen of the Court basketball program, but it will be a little different this fall; it will be virtual.

Queen of the Court is a free basketball fundamentals program offered to girls in fifth through eighth grade that live and attend school in Allentown. It has been held in the spring and fall at South Mountain Middle School.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fall 2020 program is going virtual with prerecorded workouts posted on social media outlets.

Coach Kholi teaches life skills, confidence, teamwork, and empowering the girls through the game of basketball. This program introduces the sport to beginners and helps refine the efforts of more skilled players.

“This has been such a wildly successful program that we wanted to find a way to still make it available to the girls,” said Allentown Parks & Recreation Director Karen El-Chaar. “Brittni and Recreation Program Specialist Chris Hendricks have collaborated on putting together a virtual program designed to accomplish almost as much as we could in person.”

The virtual program will feature prerecorded videos posted on Tuesdays and Thursdays later in the afternoon on the Queen of the Court 100 and the Allentown Parks and Recreation Facebook pages. Girls are encouraged to access the videos with supervision by a parent/guardian after their schooling is done. The workouts can be done in the home, backyard, or a local park.

Guest speakers may be featured throughout the virtual program.

The program will run from October 27 through December 17.

Girls who have participated in Queen of the Court in the past have made significant improvements to their skill set in the sport of basketball as well as in the classroom.

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