Super Sunday is an all day event at Shawnee Park.
Every first weekend in August for the last 56 seasons, the Dirt Bowl has brought basketball fans from all over Louisville to watch the championship game for the men’s and women’s teams.
The Dirt Bowl is a legendary summer basketball league in the West End. It’s been the birthplace of NBA players and college athletes alike for more than half a century. Basketball aficionados young and old huddle around the blue and yellow court every weekend in the summer, and this year was no exception with a nail-biting upset to close out the 2025 season.
Lowkey Lifestyle, aA team from the Newburg neighborhood, undefeated and favorite to win, Gods of the Court (GOC). Newburg’s team was 5-3 in the tournament before securing a 48-45 win. It took the last 2 minutes of the game for Lowkey Lifestyle to take the lead.
This is the first win for a team from Newburg in three years.
Patrick “Coach Pat” McGee is a player and the team’s coach. He said he was proud to represent his neighborhood and bring home the trophy.
“It's unreal right now, you know? This is what I do it for. I love my neighborhood,” he said, wiping sweat from his forehead.
This is McGee’s sixth Dirt Bowl championship. He’s been playing in the league since he was 16 years old. Now, he’s also a high school basketball coach at Marion C. Moore High School in Highview.
Dirt Bowl organizer Ravon Churchill said he enjoyed watching the older and well-known talent compete with younger players.
“That has helped us grow tremendously,” Churchill said. “Now young people are getting to see it. They’ll say, ‘I didn’t know this was like this, I want to go down and play.’ So we’ve got a lot of new teams this year.”
For the women’s league, the Blue Team secured their championship title this year 24-16. Berrytown resident China Dow has competed in five Dirt Bowl seasons and helped sustain the Blue Teams’ lead for the majority of the game.
Dow played for Middle Tennessee State University and Florida Gulf Coast University in college before coming to play in the women’s league at Shawnee Park.
“[I love] the community,” she said after the game. “It's fun out here. A lot of people don't get to play outside on a good court in front of people. It's getting bigger and bigger every year.”
Churchill said this was the most attended tournament in modern Dirt Bowl history. A total of 400 players competed this year, including 24 men’s teams, four women’s teams and six youth teams.
This is the first time in Churchill’s time with the tournament that organizers had to turn teams away at the start of the summer. He said 14 teams were waitlisted before the season began.
“The competition has been the best it's been in a long, long time,” Churchill said.
Last month, the Dirt Bowl’s Cornell Bradley Court was vandalized. According to reporting from WLKY, a driver did donuts with a car on the blue and yellow court and left thick, black skid marks behind.
“The silver lining of that, though, with so many people throughout the community, like white, Black, rich, poor, far East End, far West End, Portland, Valley Station, and every point in between, Southern Indiana, Oldham County, Shelby County, a lot of people reached out and was like, ‘Hey, what can I do to help?’” Churchill said.
Organizers and community members repainted the court, and Churchill said he plans to get a permanent fence around the court by next season.
“We think this park is going to look totally different next year,” he said. “So we can continue to protect this court, this great, iconic Cornell Bradley court, and we got to make sure that we do the best that we can.”
