The score is 4-0, and although Team Teal is losing, the girls haven’t given up hope. The coach calls a timeout. Team Teal forms a tight circle and plans their strategy. Before going back to the game, the huddled team, pumped with motivation, puts their hands in together and scream, “DIPPED CONES!”
Team Teal is a group of RBHS senior girls who play basketball for the Columbia Youth Basketball Association, or CYBA.

Since it was founded in 1992, more than 1,000 students of all ages join in teams for weekly basketball games in a CYBA league. Columbia Parks and Recreation provides CYBA games for anyone seeking to play, coach or watch, and the league consists of boys and girls ranging from grades 2-12.
Senior Sydney Strong took advantage of the opportunity Columbia gives to participate on a CYBA team this year. Strong plays on Team Teal and said her team cheers “dipped cones” at every game because the team’s coaches, Andrea Martin and Amanda Wiele, promised them that if they won a game, she would give them all dipped ice cream cones.
Strong said Team Teal has never defeated another team but that her team never gives up hope for future sweet victories.
“We don’t usually play basketball,” Strong said. “Our team is not very good. We are un-undefeated, as we like to say, because we have not won a game. But we have a lot of fun. We have one girl on our team that’s experienced with basketball, Sydney Ringdahl, who used to play RBHS basketball last year. She is our go-to player.”
Strong said the reasons most people choose to be involved in CYBA are because the participants don’t have to be good basketball players to participate. She said students can just be themselves and enjoy the game.
CYBA also allows students to coach younger players. This year, senior Bret Weise co-coaches with 2012 alumnus Connor Gundy for a fourth grade boys team.
For Weise, the best thing about coaching basketball is the joy of teaching the kids the game. Weise has been playing basketball for 12 years, and he said he takes for granted all the skills he learned and developed along the way.
Weise said most of the kids on his team never played basketball before. He said teaching them the basics is gratifying and also a struggle that doesn’t always go the way he plans.
“The worst thing about coaching is the fact that you’re completely helpless in what you do,” Weise said. “You can yell at the kids all you want and tell them what to do, but in the end, they don’t do it most of the time. You’re just kind of helpless sitting on the bench.”
Similar to Weise, senior Dylan Linneman has enjoyed being involved in basketball from a young age. Linneman played basketball on school teams for a couple of years but decided he wanted to go back to exercising his basketball skills for fun with his friends in a CYBA league.
Linneman’s team has played in five games so far and, like Strong, his team includes players who do not regularly play basketball. Linneman said it’s a terrible and slightly embarrassing feeling when one’s team gets destroyed by another.
“The worse part is probably getting beat really badly,” Linneman said. “There’s a point where it’s OK, and then there’s a point where it’s just like, ‘Oh, crap, we just got destroyed.’”
Even though Linneman’s team doesn’t win all their games, in the end it’s convivial no matter what the score is. He said it’s always entertaining to try and see if his team can win a few games.
“CYBA is just fun,” Linneman said. “It’s something you can do with a bunch of guys and you don’t necessarily have to be the greatest out there; you can just go out and try to have fun. It’s just something fun to do on Saturdays that you do with all your friends.”