A Full Basketball Evening

Today is a definite basketball day. That will be good! I haven't had one of those completely since AAU season. Okay, I guess it isn't the whole day, but it is at least all evening which is excellent. It will be three games back to back to back, so that is definitely good. They will all be high school varsity so hopefully they will be competitive. Also, I will be seeing one boy s ' game and two girls', so I'm glad that there will be some variety. I always feel like with basketball, you're kind of supposed to be there for a long period of time. For example, a nine inning baseball game is three hours. A basketball game is only an hour and a half. Therefore, I like going to more than one at a time to make it worth the trip and just to maximize my personal enjoyment. Also, at high school games, you pay to go to both games anyway since there is no discount if you only go to one, so why not watch all the basketball you can? So, hopefully everything will go well tonight, and it should be a lot of fun!

Photo by familymwr on Flickr

Equal Opportunity Dislike

I was watching AAU basketball today, and I came to a new revelation about referees. Most of the time, many people would say that the perfect ref would call a "perfect game." However, what is the perfect game? I doubt that very many of us would want the refs to call everything. I believe that in the rulebook, basketball is an almost noncontact sport. I may be wrong about this, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that there should be very limited contact allowed in a game of basketball. Therefore, if the refs called everything that could possibly be deemed a foul, I would still be in Lake Placid right now. So, obviously we do not want the refs call everything that could possibly be deemed a foul. The direct opposite of this is the refs who will not call anything. I think most of us would agree that this is not ideal either. Therefore, there needs to be some balance of whether or not a ref is doing a good job. I realized today that the ref that is doing a good job would be equally disliked by both teams. Nobody wants to be disliked, but if both teams are booing the refs with equal intensity, it at least means the refs are being consistent. There is nothing worse than biased refs, so I was comforted today as both teams and sets of fans were upset with the refs. Obviously they were not calling the ideal balance of fouls, but at least I was happy to see that the refs were being fair, right or wrong.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jmrosenfeld/ / CC BY 2.0

AAU Weekend

I think that it is very interesting to go out of state to watch basketball. Having spent the weekend in southern New Hampshire watching teams from all over New England, I think that it is safe to say that just because a team is from farther away does not mean they are exponentially better. That said, there are many teams from out-of-state that are exponentially better. Another important thing I noticed over this weekend was the difference between guys and girls basketball. I'm not going to get into the debate of which is better simply because I know that someone would read that and call me sexist, so I am just going to say that there is a vast difference between the speed of the games. I watched U-17 girls directly followed by U-17 boys, and I noticed that the guys' game ran at a much higher tempo. This could have been as simple as the differentiation of playing styles between the different teams. However, both teams ran a similar press, and the boys' simply ran much faster, and the subsequent break was executed quicker. I'm not really sure why because some girls are just as fast as guys, but these particular games had a major difference in regards to the speed. Whatever the reason was, the whole weekend was enjoyable at the Rockingham Athletic Club. I think you all should check out from the competition from as far north as Vermont and as far south as Long Island.
Photo from Flikr

My Misunderstanding

Another busy weekend down, another AAU tournament done, and another weekend closer to summer. This was a very interesting weekend as I learned how to ensure that the other team has no idea what play you are calling. Chilling out in Concord High School on Saturday night, I watched some 16-year-old guys teams walk onto the court. I had never seen one of the teams before, the St. Bruno Cougars, and I did not recognize any of their players from my variety of regular-season wanderings through the state. However, as we all know, AAU teams travel from all over to play, so I did not think much about the fact that I didn't know them. However, as soon as the game began, I realized I had no idea what these players were talking about. No, it wasn't a new strategy that I had never heard of; the players were all speaking French. I am not sure how well the other team knew French, but I honestly had no idea what these guys were talking about. Normally, I can break down codenames such as the relatively generic "five" meaning man-to-man defense or "fifty-five" meaning full court man-to-man. However, these guys could have been explaining the entire game plan, and I would not have known the better. I guess those are the hazards of being a Latin student in high school. So, my advice to any team that will play against the team I intend to have in the future, speak any language besides English or Latin, and I'll have no idea what you're talking about (although I do intend to become multilingual sometime in my future; the idea has always intrigued me).
Photo by Ian Muttoo

Chaos Reigns

AAU season has officially hit my household. We put in an opening weekend in Lamoille, and I was reminded about the insanity it can bring. I must admit that this is the only time this year that I had to actually not watch a basketball game that I had the opportunity to watch in order to get my homework done. If you had the choice, would you read about microeconomics or watch a basketball game? The only votes for yes may potentially be my two Econ professors, Prof. Gibson and Prof. Sicotte. Let me run this one by you; it seems as if my everyday insanity full of blogging and schooling gets turned up a notch when you add on top of that waking up at early hours, rushing around trying to grab a bite to eat for lunch while simultaneously attempting to be one hour early for a game that starts in one hour. Believe me, it is pure chaos! However, I thrive on chaos. If I have too much free time, I tend to waste it. In times that I only have two hours to do a whole night's worth of homework; I manage to have it all done simply because I know that it needs to get done. In times of necessity, the seemingly impossible is much easier to achieve simply because we all seem to have some tendency in our personalities that help us want to meet deadlines. We like other people to arrive promptly or complete a task when we ask them to; therefore, we know that others expect that of us as well. So, I got all of my homework done in record time this weekend because of the chaos that has ensued from AAU basketball. It's kind of weird I know, but it works for me.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/ / CC BY 2.0

Coaching and Clarification

Part two: how on earth to find the right coaches to coach in this system? First though, let me clarify a main point. The six teams would not be the only six in Vermont. If I were in charge running an AAU club, this is how I would develop it to create what I believe would be a system that would hopefully help players develop into the best they're capable of becoming. There would definitely be other teams operating because there is no regional "boss" who can regulate who creates a team and who does not. Therefore, while I still do believe that there are too many teams that talent out too far, I also realize that just creating the system I am proposing would not change the whole scenario in Vermont. My goal would be to create a system where the best players to play together on a wider scale to hopefully stimulate the development of Vermont basketball. This might sound somewhat elitist simply because I was one the best players to play for my organization. However, how is this different than any other AAU team? No matter how much I have said that there are too many teams in Vermont, I would do nothing concerning these teams other than trying to concentrate the best players within this new system. Why then would I be confident that the best players would want to play in the system? Well, one major reason would be the coaches. They would need to be focused on development, not so much on the final record. While this may seem odd coming from me, stay with me. If you take the approach of winning first, you might overlook faults in players because if they are winning right now, you'd be doing your job. However, if the focus is on development, you would see continual ways to improve because, as we all know, there is no perfect basketball player or team. In fact, I believe that if the focus is on the development of the player the wins will follow because the team will continue to improve and always be searching for ways to improve. Self-evaluation is never a bad thing, so I believe that one of the most important jobs of the coach is to develop this attitude in his or her players so that they will not become overly satisfied once the wins start coming. Tomorrow, I had to evaluate the best talent to put on an AAU team.

Geography

As promised, I now begin my weeklong look into how I would propose to improve AAU basketball throughout the state of Vermont. The first problem lies with the geography of our great state. Other than Burlington, there is no other city with a population of over 20,000 people. Cities are convenient simply because they concentrated people within a small geographic area and therefore make association simpler. In basketball terms, this is also an issue. I have enjoyed traveling around in Vermont and watching basketball in the small schools. However, I also have learned that in these small schools, there might only be one or two kids who are truly good basketball players. This is where AAU needs to do its magic. It needs to overcome the idea that AAU is simply an extension of the school team. Instead of having a bunch of AAU teams with one or two good players, why not create just one that concentrates all of these talented players? The one problem with this aspect lies in the fact that there might need to be a certain amount of travel to get these athletes to practice. However, I have heard of players traveling a few hours to practice with an elite team, so since you can be from one corner of Vermont to the other in just about four hours, if Vermont could manage to create just four of these competitive teams, no player would in theory have to travel more than one hour. Now, I do not know the talent distribution in Vermont. It might be such a thing that out of the 40 best players in Vermont, 14 of them are in the north. Then, the North team would be overloaded or would leave out some of the best players in Vermont. What to do then? Well, in looking at a population density map from the 2000 census (http://mapsof.net/uploads/static-maps/vermont_population_map.png), a majority of the population lives in or around Chittenden County. My proposal would actually involve six teams throughout Vermont. The proposed regions would be:
• Burlington area (Essex, Colchester, etc.)
• Central Vermont (Montpelier, Barre, Northfield, etc.)
• Northeast Kingdom (St. Johnsbury, Newport, etc.)
• Southern Vermont (Brattleboro, Bennington, etc.)
• Rutland area (Middlebury, Vergennes, etc.)
• Eastern Vermont (White River Junction, Windsor, etc.)
The nice part about this system is that if one team is full, there would be another team one hour away. This system would allow for 10 players at any given age group from each area. Within one hour of each of these regions, I'm sure you can find 10 good players or at least 10 players who if given proper coaching could turn their natural athleticism into solid basketball talent. Tomorrow, I will explain as I have previously noted, how I would propose that coaches train and nurture within the system.

The Details

Senior night is a great time to be in a gym. To watch the fans honor their favorite players who have in turn honored the fans by playing their hearts out for the previous four years it is somewhat bittersweet moment. Tonight, I sat in such a game and thought to myself, Man, this season is almost over. What am I going to do with my life? Well, after the playoff season and traditional trip to the Barre Auditorium comes the infamous AAU season. I want to qualify my statement by saying that I am a firm supporter of AAU basketball; however, being around it for the past few years, I have realized that it's definitely not for everyone. What do I mean by this? AAU basketball is not for the casual or social basketball player. AAU technically begins as early as eight years old, but a younger child is always allowed to play above his or her age group. Therefore, you may have a seven year old on the floor. In theory, AAU basketball season is a season that allows selective clubs to bring together the best players from various schools and form an area all-star team. As I have previously written in my blog, the theory behind this is allowing the best players the opportunity to enhance each other's skills and therefore improve each individual player as well as the entire team. I have also stated that, for the most part, many teams in Vermont do not do this. I still believe this, but I realized that my proposed solution was just like anybody else's. I can talk the talk and theorize just like anyone else and say that my idea would work. I hope to now develop a miniseries if you will that will emphasize more specific details behind what I think would help this program improve. I don't want to go on and on tonight, so I will now give you the rough outline I intend to follow.

1. Geography: How would my system be geographically distributed around Vermont?
2. Coaching: How would my system decide who would be the best coach for various ages?
3. Player Selection: How would my system ensure that the best talent is enriched through AAU?
4. Financing: How would my system be funded in the current economy?
5. Development: How would my system be any more effective at developing athletes?
6. Competition: Who would my system compete against?
7. Success: Why would the system be better than what we have now?

I hope that you will return to see where my thoughts lie. I may be totally wrong, but you'll never know unless you check it out!

Youth Specialization

Think back to what you were doing when you were 15 years old. My guess is that you were somewhere in the midst of high school, waiting one more year to get a driver's license, and probably not even thinking about college much less your future career. What if your career was already in progress? How would that change your life? For 15-year-old Maddy Schaffrick, the career of her dreams has been underway for the past eight years. This year she is the youngest competitor in the X Games, but the story gets even crazier in the fact that these are her second X Games. Even though she failed to qualify for the SuperPipe finals, the fact that she is competing at this level with only eight years of experience is amazing. When I first found this story on the Aspen Daily News website, I was amazed by the dedication this girl must have for her sport. Most people, myself included, had no concrete idea what they wanted to do for a career when they are 15. However, is this wrong? I can imagine many people arguing that when children are so involved in just one activity, their development suffers. This argument has been developed as a means to oppose AAU teams because the extreme specialization leads to more cutthroat competition. However, in this snowboarding sample as well as with AAU teams, I feel that specialization, if it is chosen by the child, can be extremely beneficial. What I mean by this is that the parent should not force the child to specialize in just one activity to make them a "superstar." If the child truly wants to commit a large portion of his or her time to one activity, then he or she should be able to. In this case, Maddy's interest is also a career. If she truly enjoys snowboarding, I think it is awesome that she is so involved in it. Any opportunity you get to use the talents that you have is great; engaging in a variety of activities is also fine, but why force children to stop doing what they enjoy most just to say they did? Specialization is not necessarily a bad thing for a child; if people have found their passion, any efforts to have them try something else will be in vain. The child will simply gravitate back towards what he or she loves to do.

Building Lone Wolf

A few days ago, I had written in my post on AAU basketball in Vermont that while I was not thrilled with everything about the system, some teams did AAU right. Today, I've decided to put one of these organizations on the forefront. Lone Wolf Athletics was founded five years ago and since has developed into a Vermont AAU powerhouse. I contacted Wayne Lafley, Lone Wolf's creator, in hopes to find what has made this program stand out and attract many talented athletes. So without further ado:

ZS: How have you built this reputation as Vermont's premier AAU basketball team that these girls should play for? I realize now that your teams and the results they produce have begun speaking for themselves; however, this reputation I assume was not instantaneously acquired. How did you convince your first team that Lone Wolf Athletics was the organization that was most capable of developing them into athletes who would be competitive at the next level?

WL: When I started Lone Wolf Athletics I originally had no plan to have AAU teams as part of my programs. The original intent was to build a business that would help develop players thru skill camps, clinics, and individual lessons. I was lucky enough to have some very talented players work with me early on and then thru word of mouth more players came. My first year I had some high-level girl players training with me. When it got to be AAU season, they all wanted to play together so some of them asked me to coach a team. I accepted the challenge and coached them. We ended up being very successful with two kids getting basketball scholarships to D1 colleges. Everything on the girls' side just snowballed from there and it seems like every year we've just gotten better. In 5 years we have had 20 girls get D1 or DII college basketball scholarships. We are very proud of that. However, none of it would have been possible without having the support of the kids, their families, and the high school coaches who supported the program.

In year two I decided to expand the program by adding a boys AAU team. Again I had some very talented boys training with me at the time and they started talking to other players and soon enough we had a very good boys team. Good players want to play with other good players so it just kept making sense for them to play together. Over the years I have assembled a very good staff that has been great with the continued development of the program and players. The boys have developed a good reputation in the northeast and many are playing at fine colleges. When you have good players and a good staff who work hard, good things happen.

ZS: Also, I was wondering how you keep AAU basketball affordable given that the economy is not quite what it once was. I noticed several sponsors on your webpage; I'm not asking for actual dollar amounts, but given all of the traveling your club does throughout spring, are these costs mainly paid through sponsor money, or do the athletes themselves have to pay those?

WL: I decided about 5 years ago to make the AAU side of things separate from the skill development business side. Lone Wolf Athletics remained the business portion which I continue to run today. I then created the Lone Wolf Basketball Club as the AAU organization. The staff and I made it a 501c3 organization which means it is tax exempt and can accept donations. Over the years we have been lucky enough to get corporate donations for the AAU program. We have also done a lot of fund raising. Obviously there is also a financial commitment from the families. I can safely say we charge less than many other programs. Another thing I should mention is that none of our coaches receive a salary. They all volunteer their time and knowledge. We do pay for their travel expenses. Many organizations pay salaries, etc. This obviously raises the cost.

ZS: Looking through your list of coaches, I noticed that the Vermont Basketball Group has merged with your organization. This will add the U16 boys' state champion to your ranks. Does your group intend to keep expanding by getting younger as I believe last year was the first year you had a U15 girls' team? Or do you intend to maintain Lone Wolf's image as Vermont's premier high school AAU basketball club?

WL: This is a good question. I want to help as many Vermont kids as possible but there is only room for so much. We have added a 15u girls' team to go along side our 17u girls' team. We also added a younger boys' team to give us two teams there also. Right now I think we are comfortable with that but you never know. I think we will expand but it will be more in the facets of programming not teams. This will be the third year of our girls summer tourney and we want to keep growing that. It has become a solid stop for the D1 & DII colleges in the northeast during the summer evaluation period. Last year we started a boys' showcase that featured the top 50 high school boys' players in the state. We had 20 colleges in for the day to see the boys play. We felt it was very successful and we would like to continue to grow that also.

I hope you have enjoyed this small preview into the business side of Lone Wolf Athletics. These types of results encourage me; as I mentioned in my previous post, when the best players play together, they are able to develop to a level where college scholarships are not beyond the realm of possibility. I would like to thank Mr. Lafley for this interview. The Lone Wolf website can be found here, and please support all AAU basketball! Highly competitive experience will indeed benefit all basketball players.

My Answer

As I stated yesterday, today I will present my defense of AAU basketball. Now at the beginning I want to state that there are teams that do AAU correctly in Vermont, but I've also seen things that don't make me feel too excited about my proposed solution. First, I think the key to a good AAU program that would produce solid players from Vermont is indeed to be competitive. Ouch, we live in an era where we want everyone to win, and no one to lose. However, I think Vermont basketball would improve if the best AAU players were concentrated on a lower number of teams. The reason I believe this is simply because players improve when there are good players around them. If some AAU team was able to concentrate the most talented players from one area onto one team rather than be dispersed among the many teams they have right now, all of these players would be better off. I know this idea would be unpopular as some players would be lost without a team. However, there are a few reasons why this might not be such a terrible thing. First, if the cut player really loves basketball and wants to play, he or she will work really hard over the summer and fall in hopes to improve and make the team next year. Therefore, his or her ability will rise and therefore raise the quality of competition in Vermont

The other result is that this athlete might realize that there is another sport that he or she is better at. To use an example from my life: anybody who knows me knows that I'm not an artist. I do not try to hide that fact, but I do not waste needless time trying to develop that talent. While artists need to be developed and taught throughout their lives, some people have a knack for art at the beginning. I, needless to say, do not. If I had been told my whole life that I was a great artist, I might not have invested time in other things that I really am good at and have a natural ability for because I would have been trying to develop the talent I don't have. I am more content because I know I'm good at what I do, and I might be able to help somebody with the new talents I discovered. Nobody loses when I find something I'm really good at, so helping people realize the talents they do possess is valuable for everyone.

I bet you're wondering who these few Vermont teams will play because there will only be a few. My answer is that these teams need to travel. I'm not saying cross-country road trips or month-long barnstorming tours, but I am trying to emphasize the need to be aware of a higher level of competition. Having traveled the tournaments around New England with my sister's AAU team, I have seen how good and how much different the competition can be just three hours away in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her team was competitive in Vermont; they could beat most teams. However, after making the three-hour drive, the competition was notably different. Neither game they played on that Saturday turned out well, but it was definitely worth the trip. These girls were exposed to a whole different level of competition that made them better players. Many people argue that this cost of traveling would be way too high for many people given the current economy and other similar concerns. However, as I cited in my last post, people in Vermont love basketball. I believe that if a logical presentation was made to potential sponsors explaining how all of Vermont basketball would benefit through AAU basketball, sponsors would come to help lower costs simply because they love the game and want to see it at its highest level possible given the available number of athletes.

I bet there are at least a few of you out there who don't believe a word I said. Please comment below and argue with me; I appreciate it. My goal here is to present the many benefits of AAU basketball and demonstrate how the system will benefit Vermont basketball as a whole. I know that you have this goal at heart too, but your strategy might be different than mine. Therefore, tell me about it; I'm not ashamed to say someone's idea is better than mine if it is!

Competitive Advantage

As of right now, I am in basketball mode. I love going into the various gyms around Vermont and seeing the pride of the small towns as they come behind their local boys and girls because quite frankly there is nothing else to do in several of these small towns. There are no alternatives to basketball; therefore, basketball has found a special niche in the center of many Vermont communities. You would think that this form of dedication lead to higher quality players because if many children played basketball, one or more would break through into the land of NCAA Division I scholarships. This does happen, but it is major news when it does. When Varsity Magazine used to be in publication, the online message boards with full of skepticism as to where that year's top senior would be attending college and whether or not he or she would be playing ball there with or without a scholarship. I think that the real reason that this is such a rarity is because unfortunately there is a lack of quality competition. Even though every child may play basketball in one town, if only one of them is good, she will not receive the recognition she would deserve because of the fact that the rest of the team is not very good.

I do not mean to sound negative or complain about Vermont basketball in any sense. After all, if I did not like it, why would it occupy my life for about one quarter of the year? There still is this dilemma though of producing higher quality athletes who are able to compete with athletes from other states. I know my solution will be controversial simply because I have heard it in my own life. I believe the answer lies with AAU basketball. I will leave you for now with this answer. Think about it, ponder it, and comments are welcome as to your opinion. Tomorrow, I will post my defense of AAU basketball and why I believe it will be able to help Vermont basketball become more competitive in terms of NCAA scholarships and to not be overwhelmed upon meeting other states in competition.