BAY MINETTE, Alabama - “I just love to see all these kids staying out of trouble. I love these people.”

PHOTOS: Bay Minette summer basketball

With the sounds of high top sneakers squeaking and basketballs pounding the polished hardwood floor in the gym at Bay Minette Intermediate School, former city councilman Melvin Bradley recalled how he got the idea for the city’s summer hoops league 13 years ago.

“I saw so many young men just walking around doing nothing in the summer, so many kids getting in trouble,” Bradley said from the bleachers during a Bay Minette summer league basketball game Thursday night.

Bradley, along with other city officials, established the Bay Minette summer basketball league as “open play” at the gym in the Douglasville community with 50 or 60 players. Today the league has eight teams with around 150 players with games at Bay Minette Intermediate School.

The league is the only one of its kind in Baldwin County. While other schools in the area host basketball camps in the summer, Bay Minette opens the gym at the Intermediate School for league play every June. The players, ages 11-18, pay a small fee for a jersey and the coaches, referees and score keepers are parents and members of the community.

The gym was packed with kids, parents, grandparents and fans on Thursday. One of those fans was Cincinnati Bengals defensive lineman Wallace Gilberry, who played in the league as a teenager looking for something to do to stay in shape during summers in Bay Minette.

“I think it is awesome what they do for these kids. It gets them off the streets in the summer time and gives them something to do,” Gilberry said. “They take pride in it. A lot of these kids are too young to work and most of them wouldn’t have anything else to do in the summer besides this. They can come here and play basketball for a few hours a day and at the same time it gets them in shape. It gets them in a team activity, teaches them to be part of a team. It is awesome.”

On Thursday the Gators faced Duke and Ohio State played North Carolina in NCAA (11-14 years) play while the Suns squared off against the Lakers and the Heat tipped against the Pistons in NBA (15-18 years) play in the nightcap.

The games move quickly with abbreviated half times and a short break between them in order to get the kids home before dark. Play begins with younger teams at 4:45 on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons in June and most of the time the older teams finish before sundown.

Most of Baldwin County High School head coach Lorenzo Hunter’s varsity Tiger players are part of the NBA division. Many of his former BCHS players, including Faulkner State guard Xavier Dortch, graduated out of the program and will play in college this season. Dortch started playing in the summer league when he was in the seventh grade and has returned this summer as an assistant coach in the NBA league.

“This league helps you elevate your game and gives Coach Hunter a chance to evaluate you. There is a lot of hard competition, the play is fast so it helps you develop as a player,” Dortch said. “All the great players that have come through BCHS and played for Coach Hunter played in this league.”

Hunter uses the league to teach local teenagers discipline while evaluating future BCHS basketball players.

“I like to call it a ‘discipline deterrent.’ This league can settle some of these high strung kids down,” he said. “So many of them are looking for something to do in the summer and sometimes some of them don’t make great decisions when they don’t have structure.

“We start the league at 11 years old and kids can play until they are 18 as long as they are still in school. All those kids like Xavier want to be in here as soon as they can be. Kids like Xavier end up being big parts of our program at BCHS. It allows me to see them grow up as people and as players and I can pass what I know about them on to college coaches.”

The final regular season games are Tuesday with the first round of the playoffs on Thursday. The league finals are set for July 2. Play begins at 4:45 p.m. in the Bay Minette Intermediate School gym.