THE FRONT ROW with MARK NELKE: Catching up, and checking in, with a few local teams at Hoopfest

“You get tougher by playing out here on the streets; you learn how to work as a team,” said Payton Brown, a rising seventh grader. “It’s just fun to sit here and see what you can do, and you realize your strengths and weaknesses, and you go home and you work at it, and you come back next year and try to be better.”