Centennial Park, AZ – In the fall of 2010, Gilbert Cawley and a group of like-minded individuals launched the Centennial Park Basketball League (CPBL), a venture born from a simple desire: to play. As the league prepares for its 18th season in 2025 – marking 16 consecutive years, including two seasons each in 2011 and 2012 – it has evolved into far more than just a sports outlet. It’s become a symbol of community resilience and unexpected reconciliation in a region grappling with its complex past.
“We just wanted to play,” Cawley reflects. “If you grew up in the Crick, you got used to not having things. The amenities and organizations that are taken for granted in other communities simply didn’t exist here.” The absence of organized sports – a legacy of a community where physical activity through recreation was often viewed with suspicion – left a void that Cawley and his peers sought to fill.
CPBL was conceived as a space where local men could experience the camaraderie and competition of organized sports. “Competitive sports are where men go to measure themselves,” Cawley explains. “It’s a place where we can get together and push each other and maybe make some friendships along the way.” The league aimed to provide the essentials: referees, a scoreboard, bleachers, and, importantly, statistics – elements that were long absent in the community’s sporting landscape.
The league’s impact, however, far surpassed its founders’ initial expectations. What began as an effort to gather enough players from the Centennial Park community quickly expanded, drawing participants from neighboring towns. “The response from the community was immediate, and it spread rapidly,” Cawley notes. “People started coming in from surrounding communities, looking forward to the season all year.”
But the true revelation came in the league’s ability to bridge deep-seated community divides. The region, marked by decades of religious strife and lingering resentments, found an unlikely catalyst for healing on the basketball court. “We live in a fractured town,” Cawley says. “I never thought to address that by creating a community basketball league. We just wanted to play ball. But what we have seen has been incredible.”
A crucial element in this transformation is the league’s draft system. Unlike typical community leagues where teams are formed by friends, CPBL randomly assigns players to teams. This mixing of players from different backgrounds has fostered unexpected connections and broken-down barriers. “This mixing feature puts guys together who would otherwise never play together and forces them to work toward a common goal,” Cawley explains. “Watching the magic happen, the walls start to come down—watching people come to realize that the other guy from across the way is actually a pretty good dude—that has been a life-changing experience for me.”
Despite its success, CPBL faces ongoing challenges. The league relies heavily on volunteers, and the limited availability of gym facilities poses a significant hurdle. “We need more buildings, and we need more funding for those buildings,” Cawley emphasizes.
Yet, the highlights of CPBL continue to outweigh the challenges. The league provides a space for adults to reconnect with their playful side and offers a glimpse into the awkward, yet endearing, world of teenage romance. “It’s just a lot of fun to get together and play,” Cawley shares. “Watching the young boys come through and develop their games, watching them being kids and doing the dumb stuff kids do…all of that is great fun.”
The league has also become a witness to the cyclical nature of life, with early participants now watching their own children play in junior leagues. “Many of the kids who came through in the early years of the league are now married to each other and have kids of their own that are starting to play basketball in the junior leagues! Life is crazy,” Cawley remarks.
CPBL stands as a testament to the power of sports to unite, heal, and foster unexpected connections. It’s a story of a community finding common ground on the basketball court, proving that even in the face of deep-seated divisions, the simple act of playing together can create lasting change.
