Ready to Score
Age is but a number for these basketball players
By Mike Costanza
Antonio Juarez moved across the basketball court at the Northwest Family YMCA on a Wednesday in February, searching for a hole in the defense. Seeing a gap, he ran forward and passed the ball to a teammate, who scored. Not bad for a 66-year-old.
Juarez is one of a group of men who regularly come to the Greece Y each Wednesday to play the game they love. They range in age from about 57 to 80 and the group is so informal that it doesn’t have a name.
Steve Karnisky, one of its founders, was also among the 12 basketball players at the Y that day.
“I love the game,” the 77-year-old said. “I’m very fond of the guys that I’ve gotten to meet and play with.”
Karnisky said that the group he helped to form was originally part of a basketball league that DePaul Recreation’s facility on Buffalo Road in Gates once hosted for men older than 50. After COVID-19 forced the league to close down, Karnisky asked Melinda Peck, the Northwest Y’s executive director, whether he and some of his fellow players could come to her facility to play basketball.
“We asked her for a spot for old guys to play basketball when we didn’t have to play with 30-year-olds,” Karnisky said.
Peck was able to find them court time and Karnisky and four or five others who had been in the league began playing together again in 2021.
“We were still wearing masks when we started at the Y,” Karnisky said.
Since then, the group has grown to about 25 men. Each Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. some of them head to the Northwest Y, divide into teams and play against each other. They play as long as they feel able, taking turns sitting on the bench or jumping in to substitute for others on their teams. All must be members of the Y in order to use the facility.
Scott Hulburt played basketball while attending high school in York, in college, in DePaul Recreation’s league and in other venues before accompanying Karnisky and others in the league to the Northwest Y.
“I just love the game of basketball,” the 75-year-old said. “To me, it’s the ultimate team sport.”
Hulburt retired from a position with the Arc of Livingston-Wyoming in 2017 and now drives 45 minutes from his home in York to play with people in his age group at the Northwest Y. His previous employer, which is now known as Arc Glow, provides services to the disabled.
Bill Brant played basketball for years until an undiagnosed problem with his feet prevented him from doing so. That problem disappeared, but he didn’t pick up the sport again until three years ago, when he was undergoing treatment for prostate and kidney cancer and cancer of the lymph nodes. The treatments reduced his bone density, but when his doctor prescribed a medication to help strengthen them, he found he couldn’t tolerate it.
“I said ‘I’m going to play basketball instead,’ so I started playing again,” the 68-year-old Rochester resident said.
Brant began shooting hoops again at the Northwest Y three years ago and continued while in treatment. Now in remission, the retired Nortel Networks Corporation engineer has found that engaging in the sport is helping him regain the energy he lost while fighting cancer. Once able to spend only half a game on the court before tiring, he can now play five in a row. Spending time with other older basketball players is also a plus.
“There’s friendship and afterwards I don’t feel tired. I feel more refreshed than tired,” he said.
Juarez was born on the mainland U.S., then moved with his family to Puerto Rico, where he played basketball during elementary, middle and high school. He moved back to the U.S. with his wife in 1988 and took a job as a truck driver for the Rochester City School District. His work and other responsibilities prevented him from engaging in the sport, and he felt the lack of exercise.
“I was gaining a lot of weight,” he said.
Juarez joined the YMCA in 2000 and headed out onto the basketball court again. He retired from his job in 2021, learned of the older men who were playing at the Northwest Y and joined them about a year ago. These days, he enjoys being a “playmaker” on the teams he joins.
“The playmaker is the guard who dribbles the ball and tries to create the play for the team,” Juarez said.
Juarez’s time on the court has helped him lose 45 pounds in the past four years, dropping his weight from 240 to 195 pounds.
Karnisky played basketball on a Catholic Youth Organization team and while attending the Aquinas Institute of Rochester, a local Catholic school, but admits he wasn’t very enthusiastic about the sport, or good at it.
“I once won an award because nobody else tried to get it,” the Greece resident said.
He fell in love with the game in the late 1960s when he attended Niagara University. College and pro basketball great Calvin Murphy played for the school back then.
“I saw him drop 68 points against Syracuse [University] in 1968,” Karnisky said. “He was just a phenomenal player and he made it look poetic.”
That poetry led Karnisky to acquire a lifelong love of the game. When arthritis prevented him from moving down the court, he had both knees replaced.
“I’m constantly working to improve my skills and get up and down the court and all that kind of stuff and it keeps my weight down,” he said. “I would probably be 350 pounds if I didn’t play basketball.”
Though Karnisky and his fellow players are all older men, the group allows others to play with them. On that particular Wednesday Jamie Painting-Naumann decided to see if the hip replacement she’d received 14 weeks earlier allowed her to play the sport she’d loved since childhood.
“I want to see if I could still do it and clearly I can,” the 42-year-old Greece resident said. “It feels good.”
Even those who aren’t currently playing basketball can enjoy the game when Karnisky and his compatriots are on the court. Peck watches from the sidelines just about every Wednesday.
“I spent half my Y career working in new sports and these guys have that same passion and just love of the game,” she said. “That’s part of the reason I just love coming in here. They haven’t outgrown it.”
Karnisky, Brant and some of their fellow players took that love of basketball to Des Moines, Iowa, last summer where they competed in the National Senior Games. Karnisky and his team played in the 70- to 75-year-old bracket.
“We won our first two games and then the injuries started hitting us and we lost the next four,” he said. “We came in sixth out of, I think there were 15 teams in our bracket.”
Those who can’t make it to the Y on Wednesdays have two other chances to take on players in their age group. A second group of older adults meets at the Rochester Sports Garden from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. on Thursdays and a third gathers at the Pine Brook Elementary School in Greece from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. on Mondays when school is in session.
For more information on the Northwest Family YMCA go to: https://rochesterymca.org/locations/northwest-family-ymca.
To support the Y’s programs, go to: https://rochesterymca.org/create-more.