RACINE, Wis. — Aniya Smith, a sixth grader at Gilmore Fine Arts School in Racine, isn’t a basketball player. 

But during a schoolwide assembly, she and other students practiced different basketball drills. 

“Probably just how to shoot better, I guess,” Smith said. 

It’s part of a program is called STEM & Sport Team Up.

It’s a partnership between SC Johnson and a not-for-profit group from Albany, New York, called 4th Family, which helps youth in underserved communities keep interest in science, technology, engineering and math fields. 

“We really try to fuse math and science and sports and show them how the two correlate, and how one will help you improve the other,” said John Scott, Co-Founder of 4th Family. 

One thing the program teaches is how high the students can jump — all by using math and science. 

Students stand on a plate, and then jump. Once they land, data is uploaded to a computer in real time, and can calculate how long it took the player to land. That time difference accurately shows how high their jump was. 

That is part one of the program. 

For part two, about 100 to 150 interested students will go to a day-long basketball clinic. The last part is a three-day camp including activities like an NBA skills combine.

While it seems like the kids are just playing, these programs, Smith said, are important. 

Many middle school students start to lose interest in math and science, and once that happens, he said it’s hard to get them back. 

But, in the 10 years he’s been running 4th Family, he said they’ve seen results with the program both in and out of school. 

“If you just do better in class, and your math and science improve, that’s a success to me,” Scott said. “We’re dealing with a lot of kids who have no idea what STEM is. It’s not necessarily focused on those kids who are going to your robotics clubs, it’s more about those kids who have not touched this work, and we’ve seen such great turn around.”

Smith said while she doesn’t ‘hate’ science, learning it this way is more fun. 

“You get to do more instead of just learning, but you get to actually experience it yourself,” Smith said. 

And for educators, that is a slam dunk. 

May 11 Editor's Note: Gilmore Fine Arts School has been edited to correctly reflect their name.