MACON, Ga. — In the season of March Madness, we're used to seeing big winners on the court. On Monday afternoon, some Macon middle and high schoolers learned that basketball can teach lessons about winning in life too.
Nearly 30 students at Georgia Methodist Children's Home participated in the Healthy Hoops Programs.
For 30 minutes, students practiced dribbling, passing, and shooting their best two-pointer. They left with health lessons they can use for the rest of their lives.
Healthy Hoops is a program through AmeriHealth Caritas. It uses basketball as a platform to provide a fun learning environment for children to take charge of their health.
"Our kids love to play sports, so anything that gets them engaged with sports they tend to enjoy," Director of Campus Life Sterling Royster said.
Royster says as his students had fun running up and down the court they were learning valuable team building skills.
"We need to teach them how to work together with a lot of things," Royster said.
Healthy Hoops puts focus on all areas of health including mental.
"For example, bullying, low self esteem, depression, isolation, all of those things are the kinds of behaviors that we need to talk about," Glenn Ellis said.
Ellis partners with Healthy Hoops and AmeriHealth Caritas to spread health literacy. He says a win for Healthy Hoops is to get students and families to want to live healthier lives.
"We can provide all the health care, all the insurance, all the prescriptions. We can give free groceries, but if people don't understand why its important to be healthy, it's all for nothing," he said.
So, they teach kids about health conditions like asthma and diabetes. At Mondays session, kids learned about the risks of smoking tobacco.
"One of the largest risk factors for death in the state of Georgia is the use of tobacco," Ellis said.
The Georgia Department of Public Health says tobacco causes nearly 11,700 people to lose their lives in the state each year.
"It can kill you. Not if you abuse it, not if you misuse it, if you don't use it according to instructions, but if you use it properly. We need to make sure there's that kind of awareness," Ellis said.
Healthy Hoops continues to share health awareness for kids to have long lives on and off the court.
"That's the only way were going to save this generation of young people," he said.
Each kid got to walk away with a book called 'Me and my Feelings' by Vanessa Green Allen. It's aimed at helping students handle their emotions.
They also scored a swag bag complete with a t-shirt and other health education goodies.
The program operates in 13 states including Washington, DC. You can find out more about Healthy Hoops and AmeriHealth Caritas here.