Official Atlanta 2025

I'm not attending any of the ATL nights. I'm just relaying some interesting local news here:

Atlanta Dream

The Dream. It’s all in the name. The players are certainly living their dreams, having achieved professional basketball stardom. But they’re also helping young girls in the Atlanta area chase theirs—through STEM. The team’s “Power Her Dreams” clinics, sponsored by Microsoft, teach girls valuable STEM skills using basketball as an exciting entry point.

Basketball and STEM are surprisingly connected. Take dribbling, for example, one of the most fundamental skills in the game. Mastering it requires finesse… and physics. At the camps, the girls learn all about the force and energy behind a ball’s bounce.

Dream star Rhyne Howard recently joined a clinic to give the girls an engineering lesson using something unexpected: their basketball shoes. “Everyone here shout out your favorite basketball shoe,” a coach prompts the girls. She barely finishes the question before their answers ring out.

“Air Force Ones!”

“Lebron’s shoes!”

“The green Kobes—like the ones I’m wearing!”

“Well,” the coach continues, “these shoes were specifically designed to give you traction on the floor—that’s engineering.”

Later, Rhyne sits on the floor with the girls, pencils and paper in hand, demonstrating how to draw plays. She sketches out a court, marks down players’ positions, and shows what angles to take to cut across defenders and drive to the basket. A coach explains that creating plays is similar to creating “if/then” statements, which are the foundations of algorithms. And that learning code skills can help them up their game.

Because at these camps, the girls aren’t just playing games—they’re making them. Arcade-style basketball games, to be exact. Using Microsoft Make:Code, the girls learn basic coding skills to build a free-throw shooting game. Microsoft and the Dream hope to create a curiosity in STEM that opens the door to more opportunities in the future. On and off the court.