As afternoon turned to evening on a warm Sunday in early September, vendors started setting up around the Barry Farm Recreation Center in Southeast D.C. They unpacked bottles of top-shelf liquor and mixers. They erected tents to sell soul food, jollof rice and Caribbean plates. One covered a table with shea butter, holistic remedies and a book of D.C. slang.
A short time later, people from around the District started to pass by, making their way to the final game of the year for the Goodman League, a long-running outdoor basketball league that has become an iconic summer tradition in this part of the city. They had come to watch basketball but also to connect and celebrate, many of them former residents of the Barry Farm area.
The bleachers filled well before tipoff of that night’s game, a championship meeting between the fan-favorite Street Athletes against the World Class Ballers. The pregame soundtrack featured exclusively go-go as fans hugged friends and sparked up hazy, herbal clouds. One woman started circulating with homemade drinks she called “ring-a-lings.” Not far from the court, one couple set up a playpen for their toddler, who peered out at the action.
Parking started to get scarce, and many drivers resorted to double-parking or pulling up on sidewalks. Miles Rawls, the league’s commissioner and de facto commentator, grabbed the mic and warned about potential towing.
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“Whoever has that Porsche down at the bottom, tend to your vehicle,” he announced to the growing crowd.
Rawls took over as commissioner in 1996, nearly 20 years after the league was founded. The court, widely referred to as the “Barry Farm coliseum,” was once next to the Barry Farm Dwellings, a sprawling, 400-unit public housing complex built in the 1940s. But those buildings were demolished in 2019 as part of the New Communities Initiative created under Mayor Muriel Bowser. Now, the coliseum sits in the shadow of two new apartment buildings — tangible proof that Barry Farm, like so many neighborhoods in the city, is changing.
This championship game marked the final contest of the 2026 season, with a murky future ahead. Although Rawls has already spent time plotting his institution’s 50th anniversary next summer, he’s unsure how the league will fit into the neighborhood. But there will be plenty of colder months to worry about that — ahead of the championship game, with a mic in his hand, he had nothing but pride.
“World Class Ballers … Street Athletes … live from the coliseum [in] Southeast D.C. where I was what?!” he asked the crowd.
“Born and raised!” they responded
Bittersweet
Detrice Belt, the president of the Barry Farm Tenants and Allies Association, attended the first game of the Goodman season in May, and that was enough.
“It’s very bittersweet,” she said. “It’s bittersweet because you see some faces that you haven’t seen, and then you don’t see a lot of faces because people can’t get there. [Others] have died.”
Belt remembers what the summer league was like before. Neighbors would walk to the games and go home for food. Everyone knew where the candy lady was located. Parking wasn’t necessary but if it got crowded, nobody worried about a tow. But the neighborhood is different now. The townhomes that loomed over the basketball court are gone. So is the corner store. So is the candy lady.
Belt has left, too. Despite her position in the tenants association, she no longer lives in Barry Farm. In 2019, Belt was one of the last residents to leave the Dwellings. She gave her two pit bulls to family and accepted the city’s help in moving herself, her daughter and her nearly 30-year-old turtle into a new building in Northeast D.C. The city continues to pay for the storage of some of her belongings and has offered her a spot at one of the neighborhood’s new apartment buildings. But Belt said she’s waiting for a townhome, like the one she had before. Besides, she’s not sure what the neighborhood will look like in a few years.
“A lot of people don’t want to return,” she said. “Because it was such a nightmare of being pushed out. So you don’t know if you’re going to get pushed out again by these new people, by the homeowners, by the new rules of the developers, because the rules will change.”
The new community is being developed through a public-private partnership between the D.C. Housing Authority and the Preservation of Affordable Housing, a nonprofit. It will be a mix of rentals, private homes and affordable housing.
Maia Shanklin Roberts, a vice president of real estate development for POAH, emphasized that the redevelopment is focused on safeguarding institutions like the Goodman League.
“You can’t ignore the trauma of the relocation and the demolition of the buildings,” she said. “Everything that we do is about restoring and repairing the relationship between community and the project, because we now have to build a new relationship.”
Roberts said she’s confident that providing the community more amenities will help rebuild trust: a grocery store, a community center, discounted rent on brick-and-mortar sites for Ward 8 businesses. But it’s also clear that the new Barry Farm will probably be made up of people unaware of the area’s history or traditions.
“[The Goodman League] is an institution, but we also have new residents and new people that live in Ward 8 and Anacostia and the surrounding community who want to be a part of the project,” Roberts said.
She admits that developers did not factor the league or its impact into the original plans. She has developed a relationship with Rawls, even raising the idea of moving the league to another location within the community. But those talks have not been fruitful.
“What I have now accepted as developer is that it is going to be there, and so what we need to do is create a place,” Roberts said.
Now, Roberts’ team is working with landscape designers to create better lighting and amenities around the current court. She’s not sure if parking will ever improve.
‘I Wanna Thank You’
By the game’s third quarter, it became clear that the World Class Ballers were going to win the Goodman League title. As the team built its lead, children took over the court with every timeout, taking their own shots in front of the crowd. Even as the score grew lopsided, Rawls tried to keep his commentary light.
“Put him on spin cycle, extra heavy, tumble, no dryer sheets!” he screamed after a highlight play.
Rawls, who considers himself to be a “day-by-day type of guy,” said he’s not planning to worry about next summer until the spring. But the end of this season had made him wistful.
“Throughout the week and all of that, that’s when it’ll really hit me,” he said. “It’s been a spectacular week, a spectacular season and a great 30 years.”
It was after 11 p.m. when the game ended. Final score: World Class Ballers 80, Street Athletes 73. A few fans, upset about the local Street Athletes team going down, hurled bottles onto the court. Ring-a-lings flew through the air. Rawls got on the mic, warning them to stop.
“Whoever it is, if you hit the wrong motherfucker, it’s gonna be a problem,” he said. “It’s a good motherfucking game. Great season. Don’t do that bama shit.”
As the debris continued raining down, he issued the threat he reserves for when he is most upset.
“Somebody hit me with something, I’m telling you right fucking now — when I move my shit indoors next year, y’all gone wonder why,” he said.
Eventually, the commotion died down and a more laid-back, cookout vibe took over. Maze and Frankie Beverly’s “I Wanna Thank You” played over speakers as fans hugged goodbye. Wayne Hall, the father who set up the playpen, started packing it away. He played in the league until 2002, and said it was a blessing to be able to still come to the Goodman games with his toddler, who watches from “his own space.”
Hall’s partner, Northeast native Lyndsay Briscoe, said she has been coming to the games for at least 16 years. Now that she has two young children, she loves being able to include them in what she sees as a quintessentially D.C. tradition. She said people have long questioned the viability of the Goodman League in a changing D.C., but she’s hoping her son will have a chance to follow in his father’s footsteps.
“Like, ‘Hey, Mom, I want to have something to do after camp,’” she imagined her son saying. “‘I want to go down to the Goodman League and play with my friends.’”
As a go-go version of “I Wanna Thank You” played over the speakers and the last visitors headed to their cars, Rawls took a second to consider the future of the league, the neighborhood and all of the fans who had just left his basketball court.
“If the neighborhood is still Barry Farm, they’re coming for the Goodman League,” he said. “That’s what they’re here for. When you build a good product, the people are going to follow you, no matter where you go.”
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