Had you been at the Alba-Golden ISD gymnasium on Monday evening, May 5, you might have heard the familiar rubber squeal of shoe soles on the floor. However, it wasn’t sneaker soles, it was soles on donkey’s shoes.

For the first time in many years, according to AGISD Superintendent Shelby Davidson, the school hosted a donkey basketball game. 

The hilarious, community building event was put on as a fundraiser for the AGISD Booster Club, which ran the event as well as benefiting from it. The wildly popular event sold several hundred tickets.

The event was set up as a three-game tournament. The first game, where AGISD staff (including all school principals) played against students, let all the players learn how to hop on and off the donkeys. Per the norm for this type of event, however, the miniature animals were often trotting away, straining away from players or stubbornly standing still during attempted shots, which created no little havoc and hilarity. 

While all players spent most of this first game simply learning how to ride the donkeys at all, student Nikolai Kent managed to carry much of it, scoring 8 out of the students’ 10 final points. For the majority of the game, the student or “home,” team held the staff at no score: however, the game started to turn the tide when AGISD Elementary Principal Pete Bell scored the first of the staff scores. At its final, students won the first game with a 10-4 victory. Kent scored the last two of the student team’s points as the buzzer sounded.

The second game was played between AGISD coaches and their athletes. Significantly more points were scored during these four periods: while in the first game, it took all four periods to score 14 points, in the first four-minute period of the second game, 10 points had already been scored. Despite coaches’ creative tactics to get the ball away from students – including attempting football strategies thrown in with “normal” basketball strategies –  student athletes also won this game 14-6.

The third game was intended to be winner vs. winner, so students competed against athletes in a crazy, hilarious game where everyone was smiling, and even the competitors were just having fun. While the student athletes won the game 8-0, players mingled to share stories and chat cheerfully (and exhaustedly) after the donkeys were safely cleared from the room.

Despite several small mishaps – including a donkey named “Widowmaker” who truly lived up to his name, biting and actually bucking players off rodeo-style – the donkey basketball event was well-supported with cheers, laughter, and general enthusiasm from players and audience members.