BUTLER TWP — Plenty of youngsters love to play basketball games.

The PK Flash know how to win them.

Thr 13-and-under traveling team, an offshoot of former Butler High coach Joe Lewandowski's longtime junior basketball league, recently won the 13-and-under AAU Division III national championship in Hampton, Va.

In its first year of existence, PK Flash won all six of its games to best a 73-team field.

"I've been running a junior basketball league with fourth-graders for 10 years now," Lewandowski said. "It's an instructional league with more than 200 kids in it last year.

"It's non-competitive. We don't even keep score. We just teach kids the game."

Former Golden Tornado players Clark Liebler, Jade Burka and Jace Lumley, among others, have helped work with the squad.

A traveling league was eventually formed from the junior league's better players. From there, a traveling team was put together.

This is the first year the team played national tournaments.

"We played in six different states, 13 tournaments and won eight of them," Lewandowski said. "We reached at least the quarterfinals in the other five."

The PK Flash played 62 tournament games and won 51 of them.

Team members included Louis Beck, Justice Lewandowski, twins Arum and Keenan Krause and Andrew Paterno from Butler, Matt Zanella from the South Butler School District, Dan Torok from Grove City, Antonio Firisina from Meadville and Antonio Kullem from Freedom.

The overall season lasted 22 weeks. The team practiced about two days a week in the Butler Cubs gym in addition to competing in tournaments.

"My body got tired, but I never got tired of playing," point guard Arum Krause said. "I play basketball every day."

Most of the players played junior high basketball in the winter before the tournament season began in March.

"We got a few weeks off. By then, we were ready to play again," Keenan Krause said. "Our team is so balanced. Everybody gets the ball and everybody can score."

His brother agreed with that.

"I could pass the ball anywhere. I could trust all of my teammates," Arum said.

Final scores of AAU national tourney games involving the PK Flash were 64-22, 80-32, 64-34, 64-54, 51-40 and 67-65 over a Connecticut team in the finals.

The team also won the USA Nationals in Erie over Fourth of July weekend.

"It became a community-based effort," Lewandowski said. "We received financial help from local businesses and Pro Knitwear donated uniforms to us.

"PK stands for Pennsylvania Keystone to show where we're from."

Like most of the team's players, Justice Lewandowski has been playing organized basketball since fourth grade. He is a shooting guard for the PK Flash.

"I wasn't surprised we wound up doing what we did," Justice Lewandowski said of securing the national title. "We've had a lot of time playing together, and once our team started practicing, we really found a groove with each other."

The PK Flash were ranked No. 12 nationally by AAU during the tournament season. Coach Lewandowski said the team has been invited to compete in the Euro-Jam Tournament in London next year.

"It's amazing how this whole thing just took off," he said.