I was recently talking to a parent of a very dedicated young player when he expressed a seemingly popular attitude in the South Texas Girls Basketball scene: "I do not want to travel because I can find good competition right here".
This statement/attitude is ONE of the major reasons that South Texas(San Antonio) basketball is behind other major cities in terms of producing high caliber girls' basketball players. While it is true that San Antonio has some good basketball players and good teams, this "stay local"philosophy is flawed and outdated.
Lets rewind to the the new millennium. The 13u 2000 AAU Division 1 Championships featured over 100 teams from across the country. These teams, coaches and players realized that to be the best, you must play the best. They understood that their local competition was probably sufficient in creating good players but not ELITE players. Among the participants in this event were two players that would meet later on a bigger stage. A young Candace Parker and her Illinois Jaguars lost to the NJB Stars led by Candice Wiggins. Parker would get her revenge eight years later but that game in 2000 helped shaped her life.Parker's father, who coached that Jaguar team, understood that Naperville, IL. was not going to provide the competition that his budding superstar needed to accomplish her goals. Wiggins father, Alan Wiggins, died in 1991. Before he died, the former San Diego Padre player instilled the same passion for competition in his young daughter. Candice Wiggins mother drove from San Diego to Orange County(1 hour distance but 3 hours in California traffic) for basketball PRACTICE with the NJB Stars. Her efforts were rewarded when the Stars won the AAU championship and her daughter caught the eye of Stanford University. These two players lived over 1700 miles apart. Thankfully their parents understood that local competition is no longer the answer to producing elite players.
I am not advocating chasing national trophies. Nowadays, every one and thier mother has a so- called national event(How is it a national event when only 4-5 states are represented and the event has less than 50 teams? More on that later). I am saying that unless you are playing up, you are not consistantly competing at an elite level. Lets look at the boys side.
I attended the Reebok Big Time tournament in Las Vagas in the summer of 2005. I was a kid in a candy store. Here were some of the players on team rosters.
SCA (Southern California All-Stars)- Kevin Love, Renardo Sidney, Brandon Jennings, Daniel Hackett, Taylor King,Malik Story- This SoCal based team had players from Orange County,LA County, Mississippi, Compton, and Oregon. Love's father, former NBA player Stan Love, flew his son to California to practice
D1 Greyhounds- OJ Mayo, Bill Walker
Mean Streets- Derrick Rose, Eric Gordon -Chicago based team but Gordon lived in Indiana
The 2008 NBA draft featured Five freshmen in the top Seven picks. I saw all Five (Love-Rose-Mayo-Michael Beasley-Gordon) of these players in the summer of 2005 in Vegas. The reason that they DOMINATED college basketball in 2007 is because they were accustomed to playing against the very best players in the nation. These players had been playing against each other for years. They were seasoned and ready to make a huge impact in college because of the elite competition that they constantly faced. Local Competition is good but National Competition is great.
