Ravyn Hoffman, a senior point guard for Dell Rapids High School, sat down and talked about her summer and lessons learned playing for the Sacred Hoops All Native 17U Basketball team. Her mother, Stacy Hoffman also commented on the program.
Sacred Hoops is hoping to raise enough funds to have not only the All Native Girls Program, but to expand to an All Native Boys Program for 14U, 15U, 16U, and 17U. Sacred Hoops was founded early in 2018 and was the dream of Allan Bertram, Matthew Rama, Eldon Marshall and others to give Native American girls the same opportunity as Caucasian girls have. Bertram had told Big Sioux Media back in the spring, “When we looked at putting a program together, we looked at who had the least amount of opportunities to showcase their basketball talent. We understood it was two groups, high school girls and Native American teens. We combined the two and started the All-Native Girls Program.
Coached by Amanda Carlow, the 17U girls had 10 girls from Pine Ridge, Todd County, Red Cloud, Sturgis, Hardin, MT, and Hoffman from Dell Rapids.