York’s dunk T.E.A.M mentors youth across Canada

Victoria Alarcon
Sports & Health Editor
What started off as a friendly dunk competition between friends turned into something they never expected: YouTube videos hitting 60,000 views, kids coming up to them for autographs and basketball players from all over Toronto wanting to join.
“It was just a York University group of basketball players, and then someone started filming it with their cellphone and putting it on YouTube and it got a lot of views,” said Mehdi Khanahmadi, the founder of AirYork and one of the main dunkers, also known as “highflyer.”

Today, the group is known as the Teen Education Athletic Mentors (T.E.A.M.), York’s very own dunk team. They put on shows and events to highlight their crazy stunts and skills that many still find impossible. From jumping over motorcycles to groups of people to dunk the basket, the York club has gained a lot of recognition since the group first started.
“We had people from the York Lions basketball team come join us who were some of the best. We recruited people from Toronto who watched the videos on YouTube, and now it’s people from all around, not necessarily just York students,” said Khanahmadi.
They recruited one of the best dunkers in the world, Justin Darlington for some shows, and moved on to dunkers who came from Alberta. It’s meeting people from all over Canada that made for some of the team’s most memorable moments.
“I think the craziest memory was when we were doing something for a magazine and one of the guys was trying to jump over a car and someone was trying to throw him the ball to catch it and get it just at least in a good pose in the air and he ended up denting the guy’s car,” said Khanahmadi, who says it was luck that it wasn’t in front of a big crowd.
Though the team excels in making dunking innovative, they also excel in mentoring kids from high school and sport camps. The York club has talked to kids from all over Toronto from about 50 high schools and sports camps.
“I was thinking in my head what could we do to be more approachable, appeal to everybody, even to someone who may not like basketball. Being a student club, what else could we offer rather than just going to a school and dunking? If we could just share with the kids how we became the way we are and leave more than just a dunk show behind, it would leave a positive image,” said Khanahmadi.
The group began discussions to answer any questions that kids may have. The dunkers see it as their way of reaching out to teenagers, offering talks about their personal experience and struggles they had to deal with.
“It’s different. It’s the kind of speech that’s relatable and you get to hear it from another young adult, not a counsellor or a teacher,” said Jelani Philbert, the marketing administrator of the group. It’s one of the reasons the group is gaining a lot more momentum these months and have people looking forward to a lot more.
There’s a deep fascination with the group and what they do, noted Philbert, and that may be because there just aren’t many dunk groups in Toronto, if any. But what the group is hoping to do is expand to places outside of the Greater Toronto Area and move around Canada.
“We’re going to keep pushing forward to try and open up the reach where we can help,” said Philbert.
What York students can expect is seeing them sometime during summer where they will be hosting a variety of dunk shows.