Upward Sports FM

One practice a week beginning in early January at the same place and same time each week. Players will always practice at the same time and same location all season long. Locations are: Bethel, Calvary Fargo, Northview Churches, Park Christian School and Kindred Elementary. Practice start times are between 4:30pm -7:45pm. Usually the younger divisions practice in the early time slots. We offer practice times every day of the week except Wednesday. Again only one practice a week lasting 1 hr.

When you register you can choose one night of the week that does not work for your child to practice – we cannot 100% guarantee any other practice night request after that.

One 1 hr game every Saturday (mid-January through mid-March) between the hours of 8:30am – 4pm. K-4th grade game (1/2 court sideline to sideline) and 5th-8th grade games (full court) locations rotate between Calvary Fargo, Bethel Church, Northview Church, Park Christian School and Kindred Elementary.

No. Biblical truths are shared at every practice and game, but you do not need to attend a church to play Upward – over 35% of our families don’t.

Most volunteer coaches are parents of a player on the team. If you as a parent sign up to coach you can pick the night and time you wish to practice. Coaches are given first priority when assigning practice nights and times. How about that for an incentive?! Yes, your child and any other player they are linked with through the registration carpool link will be placed on that coaches team.

Yes! 25% of players have never played organized basketball before.

Everyone makes a team, and every player plays the same amount of time (K-4th grade).

The divisions are: 
Kindergarten (Co-ed), 
1st Grade (boys and girls division)
2nd Grade (boys and girls division)
3rd Grade (boys and girls division) 
4th Grade (boys and girls division)
5th-6th (boys and girls division) 
7th-8th (boys and girls division)

High quality reversible game day jersey & shorts are provided with your registration fee. Most players wear their jersey and shorts for both practice and games.

You can choose ONE friend to be on your child’s team. Both families need to enter the other child’s name in the carpool link during registration. Please do not enter more than one child in the carpool link. If you do the software will not recognize the extra data and skip over it and the players will not be placed on the same team. Please make sure to spell the name correctly.
Many parents ask for their child to be placed on teams with other children from their school. Being that we do not ask for school information during the online registration we have no way of knowing what child attends what school.
After evaluation scores are entered, our computer software assembles teams using each players evaluation scores in an attempt to have all the teams be balanced so games are not lopsided. We will have over 1,000 players each season, so there are a lot of moving parts with formulating teams.

We offer cheer leading also. These squads practice once during the week and cheer at games on Saturday. Use the same link to register for basketball or cheer.

Registration fee is $109 until the end of October, $129 after November 1st.

Practice Schedules and Team Rosters will be emailed out 10 days after our last evaluation.

No – Just one. After registering your child you will receive a link to Sign Up Genius where you can sign up for a time slot that works for your family. Again, you only need to attend ONE of the four evaluations offered. Evals should last 30 minutes.

When you register, you can mark the box that indicates you would like to volunteer to coach your child’s team. That’s all there is to it! We have a coaches meeting in mid-December. You will also be given an app that gives you step-by-step instructions on how to run a practice and coach a game. All coaches must complete a background check before allowed on the practice court.

We would prefer that Upward players do not also play on a traveling team. Most members of traveling teams are very good players and score very high at Upward evaluations. As a result they are placed on an Upward team as that teams top ranked player. However, if they can only attend 50% of the Upward games due to travel ball commitments that players Upward team will be at a severe disadvantage at every game that player misses. We are not against travel basketball but would ask that you choose one or the other not try and do both.