We operate out of a barn-turned-gym near Sweetser, Indiana.
We purchased the barn from the Cranor family (Keith and Dolores) in 2017. The story goes, I (Courtney) was out for a country drive getting our youngest baby down for a nap. One of our friends had told us about the house for sale, and my drive that day was to drive by and check it out. I looked online at pictures of the inside of the house prior to arriving at the property, but there were no pictures of the inside of the barn. I pulled into the driveway and got out of my vehicle to see if the barn door was open. I was curious if you could shoot a basketball or not.
I walked into the barn saw the open space and high beams and immediately went back out to my vehicle and grabbed a basketball. I went back in and using my imagination shot the basketball in the direction where I imagined there being a basketball goal…the ball didn’t hit the beams, you could in fact shoot a basketball! I immediately called Jordan and told him to book an appointment with the realtor ASAP. We looked at the house the next day, starting with the barn first. When we were in the barn I elbowed Jordan and told him to make an offer. He looked at me and said, “you haven’t even seen the inside of the house.”
The first ever shooting workout at the barn.
On September 24, 2017 Jordan Delks and Courtney Delks became the first people to do a shooting workout on the newly poured cement in the barn. Courtney had not worn her Indiana Miss Basketball jersey since she last wore it in the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star series where she scored 52 points in the two games. For the first time in seven years, Courtney wore the jersey for the monumental shooting workout in the barn.
Line Dancing in the Barn
By the grace of God, we purchased the home in the fall of 2017. With the help of our families we cleaned and unloaded bales of hay and straw from the hayloft, power-hosed the walls down, tore out old concrete, poured new concrete, and put in a new basketball goal. Before we had even moved into the house, we had our first 3v3 tournament at the barn that fall and had boys, girls, and families coming from all over the state of Indiana to play in the first annual Harvest Barn Ball Tournament. It was a frigid fall Indiana day, we had planned on having the barn doors open and playing with natural light, but because of the cold and wind we had to have the barn doors closed and we operated the tournament by one spotlight on the wall behind the basket. True barn ball, if you shot it from a particular angle the light shined right in your eyes. We served hot chocolate and moms, dads, grandpas, grandmas, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and cousins enjoyed a true day of Indiana barn ball basketball. It was glorious.
The area in the barn where we put a weight room is where they used to milk cows. We have multiple people in our community who come into the barn and tell us “I used to milk cows in this barn back when I was a kid."
At the first tournament, there was a girls team that came up from Indy. We didn’t have enough girls teams registered so they played in the boys league…and they WON! The 7th-grade girls beat the 7th grade Oak Hill boys team! On this girls team was a girl named Ashlynn Shade. She is now going into her junior year of high school at Noblesville and is ranked #5 in the nation in the class of 2023, she has multiple D1 offers and is a front runner for 2023 Indiana Miss Basketball!