A Peculiar Pastime: Looking Back at Donkey Basketball
Hooves clatter. A buzzer rings. The crowd goes wild. Although easily mistaken for a Monty Python sketch, donkey basketball is in fact a real event, once put on by schools throughout the country. The unlikely sport is an entertaining fundraiser that persisted in Southern Nevada until the mid-1980s and occasionally makes appearances in rural Nevada counties.
Picture: Basic Donkeys 1
A teacher struggles to pull a donkey at Basic High School’s El Lobo 1985-86 yearbook.
A look through a past generation’s yearbook from Basic High School, located in Henderson, Nevada, reveals a handful each of faculty and students seated on top of donkeys. Participants wore helmets while the donkeys’ feet were padded to not scratch the basketball court.
Barbara Gillaspy, who graduated and later coached at Basic, remembers playing donkey basketball when she was in high school.
“I remember that I played in at least two of those games,” Gillaspy said. “And yet that was one of the toughest workouts I ever had because donkeys didn’t want to move most of the time. And then sometimes they wanted to, and so you never knew when they were going to run.”
Picture: Elko Donkeys
A 2014 match played at Spring Creek High School in Elko, Nevada. Photograph by Alex Peters.
Gillaspy recalls that the fundraiser was done for and organized by the school’s JROTC (Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps). Each year at Basic, the game was held at the end of basketball season and pitted the football team against the staff. Clark High School, also located in the Clark County School District, expanded the game to raise more funds. Two 15-minute games were played, pitting district court judges versus highway patrolmen and Clark lettermen versus band members, for an entrance fee of $3. Participants had to be on donkey-back in order to handle the ball, though dismounting was allowed to move, or attempt to move, the donkeys around the court.
The donkeys were rented by the school from a local carnival. Nowadays, in the few districts that continue the practice, donkeys are generally supplied by an out of town company. Donkey Sports, Inc. continues to run an annual tour across seven states in the Midwest and West from November to June. The company declined a formal interview after being provided questions about their response to animal rights activists.
“I think we worry a little bit about liability too much but you have to because of the way people are nowadays,” Dan Cahill said. The history and government teacher at Basic High School competed in the games. Cahill doubts that the game could continue in the modern day. “A lot of good things like that have gone away just for that reason. Like I said, you can’t even do anything in gym. You might get hurt on a trampoline. You’re not allowed to climb ropes anymore. I would doubt very seriously that a school district would allow anything like that. I think that’s a real problem in our society.”
The sport is usually played as a half court game, and may have shortened quarters to ensure the donkeys aren’t overworked. No one interviewed had any doubts that a donkey could hold an adult, however PETA states that an adult donkey, weighing 350 pounds, cannot hold more than 30% of its body weight. That would correlate to 105 pounds, a weight lower than that of a majority of adults and many teens, especially football players.
Picture: Basic Donkeys 2
Basic High School’s Coach Whitehead on donkey-back.
“The days of fun and games are coming to an end,” said John Williams, the athletic director at Basic during the 1980s. Basic ended the fundraising practice in 1985.
Despite the prevalence of small towns throughout Nevada, the majority of school districts no longer use the sport as a fundraiser. The novelty’s popularity has been waning outside of the state due to an increase in animal rights campaigns.
In Pennsylvania, the Fleetwood Area School District, who declined to be interviewed for this story, recently banned the sport after receiving feedback from students about possible animal cruelty. Dodgeball, their replacement as the annual fundraiser, has raised more money than their donkey basketball games previously had.
Safety concerns for the rider are also a concern of critics. A fifth-grade teacher in Florida sued Dixie Donkey Ball company and the Diocese of St. Petersburg. She claimed that she was injured after being thrown off by a donkey at a local fundraiser. A litigant was awarded $110,000 in damages for injuries during a game in Waterloo, Illinois.
Picture: Pahrump Donkeys
A match played in Pahrump, Nevada, in 2015. Photograph by Vern Hee.
Despite these concerns, some school districts across the country still organize the fundraiser, according to Jeff Beckstaiger, a student at the University of Nevada, Reno.
“It usually was before a banquet,” Beckstaiger said. “I don’t remember anyone getting hurt, the donkeys aren’t very fast.”
Beckstaiger graduated from Elk Grove High School in 2016. The school, located outside of Sacramento, often plays against rival schools in the district and points are kept. The sport continues to be played annually at the school on behalf of the Future Farmers of America Boosters Club.
Donkey basketball, the quirky fundraising sport once popular in small towns, stands out as an entertaining and memorable chapter in history. From Henderson to Elk Grove, the sport’s revival seems unlikely due to a change in societal attitude. The ringing buzzers and clattering hooves may have long faded, but the memories linger as a testament to a bygone era of creative school fundraising.