Shoe
Games(Circuits)- This is a subject that many refuse to touch
publicly. I am not smart enough to heed the admonishments of the powers that
be. The shoe affiliations of clubs entail pros and cons. I will attempt to
address both through my limited vision.
I have been a witness to both the Nike and adidas club
circuits as a coach under the umbrella of a Nike team and an adidias team. I am under the impression that neither Nike nor adidas no longer
provide monetary stipends to its club teams.
Nike is by far the most prestigious shoe circuit on the
girls side of basketball. Attending Nike Nationals as a fan this past July was
a great experience. The event featured college refs(3) for every game, a great
location, highly competitive teams, great players, college coaches everywhere
and was very organized. The Nike circuit also has the Nike Regional Skills
Academy, a skills clinic attended by some of the best players in that
particular region. The NRSA is not exclusive to 'Nike Players" and is truly a very good thing for the sport. Being a Nike team certainly has its perks like free or
discounted shoes. Or very unique shoes, only distributed to Nike sponsored
teams. To be a Nike team, in my oppinion, a club must have at least a decent reputation for having college bound kids. You would also have to have some longevity and national promenence.
adidas is the other major circuit. The adidas circuit was
very strong years ago when it was headed by Mike T White. The adidas circuit
has a national event as well. I attended a couple of them a few years ago when it was held at Texas
A&M and Indiana University. The caliber of teams, by in large, were and are not as talented as the Nike
circuit. The 2008 and 2009 adidas circuit featured very good teams such as FBC,
TeamXpress, Memphis Bobcats, Oregon Reign, and Houston Elite. These teams
featured outstanding players and teams that could hold their own against any
Nike team at that time. Again, this circuit features free and reduced product.
However, adidas has apparently limited the free shoes and goods in favor of
heavily discounted product in a cost saving measure. adidas had the adidas
Nations teams in the past. This program took the best adidas sponsored kids and
matched them up against young prep stars from different countries. In fact,
this is how local legend, Meighan Simmons, attracted the affection of Candice
Parker and the University of Tennessee.
Now to the meat and potatoes, are shoe affiliations needed
to accomplish club goals? Or, does a player need to be associated with a particular shoe sponsored team to realize their college goals? To be frank, NO!! If a club coach director and or
parent/player is focused on what really matters, a college scholarship, shoe
affiliation is not all that important.
Here is one of the biggest lies that SOME shoe sponsored teams
like to diseminate; To play the best competition, you have to play on a
particular circuit.
Here is an example of why this is not true.
SA Reagan standout Wendy Knight '14 has played against the
following players in her career with SA Finest Basketball:
Alexis Jones(Duke/ESPN #3/McDonald AA), Briana Turner(ESPN #2 2014/USA
u17),Kelsey Mitchell(ESPN #1) ,Jordin Canada(ESPN #3/USA u16), Lahjana
Drummer(ESPN #7),Zaire O'Neil(ESPN Top 25) ,Mycah Johnson(ESPN Top25),Erica
McCall(ESPN Top 15/USA u16/u17) ,McKenzie Calvert(/Baylor commit) ,Jada Terry(
ESPN Top 50),Candace Adams(ESPN Top 60),Brianna Day(ESPN Top 50) Peyton Little(Texas
A&M/ESPN Top 5), Brooke McCarty(ESPN Top 20), AJ Alix(ESPN Top 50), Jessica
Washington(ESPN #20/ USA u17/UNC commit)Courtney Williams(Texas A&M/ESPN
Top 10/ McDonalds AA), Gabby Greene(2104 ESPN #6 )
Here are some of the Top Teams she has faced:
DFW Elite(Nike),
Cy-Fair Shock(Nike), Essence(Nike), Boo Williams(Nike),Cal Sparks Gold, All
Ohio(Nike)WV Thunder, NJ Sparks(Adidas)Missouri Phenom ,Oklahoma Select ,EBX
,Nebraska Shooting Stars, Mokan Eclipse, Texas Prep Stars.
These are just few of
the players and teams that Knight has faced, and she plays for an unaffiliated
club. She has faced at least a dozen former or future McDonald All- Americans.
She has played 5 of the 20 or so Nike teams. She has played at least twice as
many adidas sponsored teams.
Development- Now
that we see that great competition is accessible without shoe affiliation,
let's look at development for the average player. How does the average college
prospect develop? Players develop by working on their craft(training) and
PLAYING!! So often I have seen good players join stacked shoe sponsored club
and ride the pine or take on a new limited role. A two time national
championship coach cautioned me against placing my child on the numerous shoe
sponsored clubs in Texas for this exact reason. She argued that my child would
be better served staying with an independent and experiencing growing pains while playing
AGAINST stacked teams instead of playing WITH a stacked team. Now, one can
reason that that advice was to stroke my ego while recruiting my child. My retort
is to point out that this coach would have better access and could better monitor my childs'
recruitment by encouraging her to play with a friendly shoe sponsored club.
Many reputable college coaches feel the same way but out of fear of alienating
powerful club coaches, they keep their mouth shut.
The best case scenario of this is Alexis Jones. I can care
less about what the experts say, Alexis Jones was the best guard in the country
last season. No knock to any other guard in 2012, but I've seen them all,
except Jewell Lloyd, and Alexis is hands
down the best. Alexis played with one of the most successful shoe sponsored
clubs in the country early in her high school career. She left to play with a
team of good but not great players, led by her father. I watched Alexis almost
record a triple double, while tallying 30 plus points vs a top 5 team in the
country that featured 10 or so BCS bound kids(2 McDonald All-Americans). Alexis
faced traps and junk defenses by some of the best teams in the country. She put on shows at huge
events such as PBR Super 64 and Battle in the Bayou against shoe sponsored
teams. She made the USA team while playing for her father, not for a shoe
sponsored team. Alexis did not have fellow All-Americans to lean on when facing
multiple All-Americans. Consequently, she got better!
In a local example of this, Kyra Lambert had a great summer.
The Top 20 player in the class of 2015 grew! When running into to her at Battle
in the Boro, I asked how her summer was going. She replied that she was playing
better. She went on to say that she had a tough time at the Oregon City End of
the Trail, one of the best events in the county. She apparently faced junk defenses set out to neutralize her in Oregon. I smiled
with satisfaction when hearing this. The 15 year old Lambert GOT BETTER! I was
privy to the many opportunities she had to play for shoe sponsored teams this
club season. One in particular, DFW Elite-Washington, now renamed Texas Prep
Stars, went hard after Lambert. Texas Prep Stars is a great team featuring the
incredible Lashann Higgs from the 2015 class. Besides Higgs, they feature
another Top 20 guard in 2015 in Alyssa Dry. They also have the most exciting player in
the state in 2013 Nakia Jones, a guard for Beaumont Ozone. Texas Preps feature
at least two other Top 50 kids, one of them, Jordan Posey, is a probable Top 25
kid. Add the 6'4 BCS bound Kelsey Lang and you see the opportunity Lambert had
to play with a truly elite(stacked) team. But, how much better would Lambert have gotten this summer sharing court time with
these fellow Top 50 players? She surely would not have faced Box and 1 like
junk defenses. She would not have struggled since she would have had so much
BCS talent to lean on. Lambert led her Sophia Young Elite team against a Top 5 national
team in the Georgia Metros(Nike). She also faced the top player in the country
for 2013 according to ESPN Hoopgurlz, Mercedes Russell. In regards to
development, who got better? Lambert or the many guards languishing on the
benches of stacked teams across the country in the name of a shoe? Or in the
name of a trophy? Or in the name of ranking? Who got better; Lambert by a
landslide!
College- Back to
the real reason to play club ball, scholarships. Here are some small comparisons
to illustrate my point that the game is the game, despite shoe affiliation.
The University of New Mexico
has commitments from Brooke Allemand and Alex Lapeyrolerie for 2013. Allemand plays for the independent SA
Finest Blue and Lapeyrolerie plays for Nike sponsored Cy-Fair Shock's second
team.
Tulane has commitments from Courtney Latham and Leslie
Vorpahl. Latham plays for Nike Cy-Fair Shock-Coleman and Vorpahl plays for the
independent SA Heat-Cantu.
Diamond Lockhart
recently committed to Texas Tech. She plays for DFW Elite, a Nike
sponsored team. Tesha Smith is being heavily recruited by the same Texas Tech
and has the opportunity to attend the school if she chooses. Smith plays for
the independent, SA Finest.
(For the record, I love the games of Alex Lap, Latham and
Lockhart. I first saw Lap at a Houston tournament when she was a 7th grader and
her length and athleticism was easily admired. I first took note of Latham at
Texas A&M elite camp a couple years ago and loved her savvy game. I have
been a Lockhart fan since her 8th grade
year and she matched up against my squad in the Lady Rohawk event. She gave me
fits!)
Again, this is not a knock on any Nike team and it is surely
not a comparison between independent like SA Finest and national kingpins DFW
Elite and Cy-Fair-Shock. There is no
comparison! These Nike clubs are goliaths in the game!
What I am saying is that playing for independents has its
advantages, just as playing for shoe sponsored clubs has advantages as well. I
am addressing the widespread misperception that shoe sponsored clubs are
superior to all independents and the fallacy that shoe sponsored teams better
prepare kids for college.
Surely one advantage that I perceive shoe sponsored teams having
is getting marginal players into BCS schools.
I have not, nor will I ever name players on this blog in a negative way,
however, take a look at how many ineffective bench warmers are sitting at BCS
schools and you will find a large number of them who played for powerful shoe
sponsored clubs. I have a 2 part theory behind the presence of so many BCS
benchwarmers from power clubs.
First, BCS coaches
wish to keep favorable relationships with power clubs. To do so, they take
mediocre players for their level in hope that that club program will deliver
their next superstars to them through loyalty. On more than a few college
visits, I have been introduced to players in ways such as this, " This is
Suzy Q, she is from such and such, and she played for (insert shoe sponsored
club)." Inevitably, I sit and watch the team practice and see why I
received the club resume of the player. In a good majority of the cases, she
cannot play!!! The kids that CAN play, and played for shoe sponsored clubs, do
not need the introductions or club team affiliation in the introduction. Their
games speak for themselves! Geno Auriemma
did not need to say that Maya Moore played for the Nike sponsored Georgia
Metros when speaking of her.
The second reason that I believe so many BCS benches are
being warmed by shoe sponsored former players is that many club coaches guide
them wrongly through vanity. It is so much more of a recruiting tool if a club
director can say "I have this kid at this BCS conference school." It is impressive on the website for a club to
post how many NCAA tournament appearances that their BCS players have experienced.
Never mind that a large portion of those kids may not have actually contributed
much on the court. Instead on guiding
players to mid-low major universities that their players CAN PLAY at, many power
programs put vanity ahead of the best interest of their kids.
With all that being said, who would not want to be a Nike
sponsored team? I would! As long as I could continue to develop and not amass a
five figure recruiting and operating budget. Winning a tournament by over
recruiting players that have been with
me for years is not a cost that I am willing to pay right now. My naivety has
me thinking that this is not the way club ball should be. But, what do I know?
Probably not much!!!
