With five games left on the regular season schedule, players in the Baby Boomers Basketball League (BBBL) have an air of added intensity as the standings begin to sort out which of the eight teams will make the six playoff berths.

Ken Preaster steps to the foul line to sink two shots in the Next Level team’s pre-game ritual. His teammates applaud him and each other’s efforts as they rotate around the paint, bonding as the buzzer approaches, sounding the first contest of the day. Another Sunday. Another four BBBL games at the Southwest Community Center.

At 52, Preaster has spent seven years playing in the over-40 league (Players can be 39 at the beginning of the season as long as they turn 40 before the championship game). “There’s a lot of guys my own age,” he reflects on his preference for the BBBL over pick up games at the Y, or other rec leagues. “At the Y or in the park, you don’t know who you’re playing against. Here there’s more respect. And we play a different brand of ball than the younger guys: find the open man, share the ball, pick and roll. They do a lot more dribbling.”

Entering the game with a record of 6 and 3, Next Level may not catch the league leading Cuse O. Gees or Ballard Construction, both starting the day at 8 and 1. But with a full bench showing up for each game they are contending for a good seeding in the playoffs.

“At first everyone wants to start and get a lot of minutes,” Preaster notes. “Then you realize, with ten guys on the team you can go really hard for ten or twelve minutes and then sit down. You’ve got to be in reasonable shape and know the game to play here, but it takes team chemistry to win.”

Preaster observes that the play becomes more competitive, and more physical, when the games are close.

“But you don’t have too many people diving on the floor for a loose ball,” he says. “Everybody knows they’ve got to go to work the next day. I can probably play ’til I’m 60, because I don’t try anything I can’t do. You’ve got to play within yourself.”

Their game that day was not close, however, as Next Level beat F.O.C.U.S. (Firefighters of Color United of Syracuse) 77-42.

The second game wasn’t close either. Ballard Construction beat the Cuse Boyz 87-30. Ballard, last year’s league champion, caused quite a stir this season with the presence of former SU and Corcorcan HS standout Howard Trisch, bolstering an already impressive lineup of big name area hoopsters.

“Most of the guys won’t admit it,” Preaster says, “but having Howard here is a real point of pride for the league.”

According to league co-founder James “Puddin” Jackson, the involvement of players with storied local careers helped get the league established.

Now 60, Jackson recalls playing in rec leagues with John “Daddy Wags” Wagner, who at 62 is the oldest regular player in the league. “We played in those little gyms with low ceilings,” Jackson says. He and the other BBBL cofounder Ed Mitchell were then working at Southwest Community Center, where the gym was spacious and had locker rooms. They approached SWCC director Jesse Dowdell, himself a former hoopster with a local rep then in his early 50s, enticing him to become involved by dropping names like Kenny Lewis, Chris Sease and Joe Reddick. Eleven years later interest is so strong the league will expand to nine teams next year.

The day’s third game finds International and Battle Florist, both at 2-7, head to head in the quest for the sixth and last playoff birth. The intensity builds as Battle Florist calls time out down one point with 1:48 left in the game. But individual, rather than team, efforts prove unsuccessful, and International pulls ahead to win 49-39. The stands are packed for the day’s last game, a see-saw battle between the O.Gee’s and B&B Lounge, with the O.Gee’s keeping pace in the standings with Ballard with a 51-40 victory.