Home » Sports » Citizen Horwitz. Philly Youth Basketball provides life-changing opportunities for our kids. One of the founding tenets of The Philadelphia Citizen is to get people the resources they need to become better, more engaged citizens of their city.
We hope to do that in our Good Citizenship Toolkit, which includes a host of ways to get involved in Philadelphia — whether you want to contact your City Councilmember about supporting youth sports, get those experiencing homelessness the goods they need , or simply go out to dinner somewhere where you know your money is going toward a greater good.
Vote and strengthen democracy. Stand up for marginalized communities. Create a cleaner, greener Philadelphia. Help our local youth and schools succeed. Support local businesses. And go here for more audio articles from CitizenCast. BY Larry Platt. He was eyeing the team huddle during a timeout, zeroing in on the diminutive elderly figure who seemed to stand if not in it, then smack dab on its periphery.
When the huddle broke, the players turned to high-five and hug this strange Buddha-like presence in their midst, some sort of solemn ritual, before heading back out to engage in hardcourt combat. And, one might add now, of the city. His is a dying breed; Philadelphia has always been a place dotted by the inspiring presence of characters and by men and women of character, and Horwitz qualifies on both fronts. Real estate developer, craps aficionado, sideline maniac — the only fan I know of not only to have a technical foul called on him, but also to have been tossed from an NBA game.
The last time I bumped into him, at Zarett Rehab, the physical therapy spot where legions try to stave off the encroachments of age, I made the mistake of announcing to a roomful of hyperventilating machers that Horwitz had once been ejected from a Sixers playoff game at Boston. Yes, he goes to away games, and has been known to fly on the team plane. Those traits will be on full display next week, at the opening of the state-of-the-art Alan Horwitz Sixth Man Center opens, a basketball and education complex in North Philly that, for nearly a decade, has been the driving dream of Kenny Holdsman , a visionary and hustler with a background in education.
