Happy Hour: Southside Nine-Year-Old Breaks Basketball World Record to Honor “Papa”

How many of you can dribble a ball for more than a few minutes? How about 80 minutes? How about 80 minutes while wearing a blindfold!?

That’s exactly what 4th grader Henry Speedwell did back on February 3rd at his school, Mt. Greenwood Elementary, that earned him a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records! The previous record for length of time dribbling a basketball blindfolded was just 67 minutes.

Child’s play.

Young Henry smashed the world record by 13 minutes! His family is currently in the process of sending in the evidence to have it confirmed by GWR, which could take up to three months.

Even more impressive than Henry’s focus and determination through months of practice was the reason he wanted to go for the record in the first place. He wanted to honor his late grandfather, Jay Canna, who passed away a bit over a year ago from pancreatic cancer. Henry’s Papa Jay was the one who instilled the love of basketball into Henry, teaching him to dribble at the age of ONE…at least trying to!

Henry said he wanted to honor his late Papa, so he attached a fundraiser for the Lustgarten Foundation to his world record attempt.

As of the time of this writing, the fundraiser sits at just shy of $3,000…about twice his goal!

But the REAL good news here is how this honors Papa Jay’s legacy, and how Henry will remember it. There will be a time 20 years from now when Henry will look back on this entire thing and smile; not because he did something cool (which he did!), but because it will remind him of his grandfather…and that is worth far more than his new world record.

CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO HENRY’S CAUSE