Chris Cardenas, President Kultura Chicago

By: Ryan Tejero

 

Founded in 2024, Kultura Chicago was established with a mission to build one strong Filipino community through Filipinos’ most loved sports – basketball. The game of basketball brings people together, supports mental, emotional, and physical well-being, and creates lasting memories for players, families, volunteers, and supporters. While basketball is highly competitive and can be physically aggressive as a sport, the group operates and holds the values of friendship, fellowship, unity and sportsmanship.
Since its inception, Kultura has successfully organized its annual basketball tournaments and was graced by out of state teams from New York, Ohio, Indiana and Missouri. These tournaments paved the way to building new friendships, celebrating and promoting Filipino culture and inspiring the community and the younger generations.
Kultura founder, Chris Cardenas is from Sta. Maria, Bulacan in the Philippines. He migrated to the US in 2009. Chris works in the healthcare industry. He is a member of the Association of Filipino Freemasons in Illinois (AFFI). Growing up, he already shows a lot of interest in playing basketball. He played in his school. When asked about how he started Kultura Chicago, Chris said that “Before founding Kultura Chicago, I started a grassroots basketball community called Sunday Ballers Club, where we organized weekly pickup games for Filipino-American basketball enthusiasts throughout the Chicago area. It began as a simple way to bring people together, build friendships, and enjoy the game we all love.”
While Chris saw the growing community in Chicago, he organized his first major basketball event – Sunday Ballers Club Exhibition Game, which was held on June 5–6, 2021, at Zone Life 360 in West Dundee, Illinois. The success of the tournament was brought by the participation of the teams from Chicago, Memphis, and St. Louis. The simple and modest event served as the motivation for Chris to start something big.
In 2024, Chris decided to organize Kultura Chicago. He said that “I officially founded Kultura Chicago in 2024 with a mission to unite the Filipino-American community through sports, culture, and service. What started as weekly pickup games has grown into one of the Midwest’s premier Filipino-
American basketball organizations, hosting large-scale tournaments that bring together teams from Illinois and across the United States.”
Today, Kultura Chicago continues to create a venue to promote the sport of basketball and giving opportunities to connect for athletes, families, businesses, and community leaders. The group is also able to bring together vendors composed of Filipino-owned businesses not only to sponsor the event but also to promote a
wide variety of products and services. These vendors include food establishments, media organizations, healthcare and wellness businesses, realty groups, and many others.
Kultura Chicago will continue to showcase the talent of basketball players. It will create opportunities for greater exposure to athletes, and eventually exposures that will successfully connect them to professional basketball organizations, college scholarships and sports programs in universities.
Chris expressed that “Filipino-American athletes possess exceptional talent and deserve opportunities to pursue their dreams while pursuing personal growth.”
Kultura Chicago has plans to travel to compete to other states or maybe out of the country. The plan is in the summer of 2027. Visit www.kulturahoopschicago.com for additional information about Kultura Chicago and shop on Kultura merchandise.

 

Kultura Chicago showcasing basketball talents of players through tournaments.

Kultura Chicago uniting Filipinos through basketball

FilAm community supporting Kultura Chicago.