Change is on the way in youth hoops
The growth and evolution of the summer club basketball landscape has been something that I've watched closely over the past 26 years as a college coach and more recently an evaluator and columnist.
The tremendous leap in the level of play has been staggering, just as the number of participants has gone through the roof. In that time, as we've noted many times before, there's also been a massive proliferation of NCAA-certified events.
This summer alone the NCAA certified 169 events that Division I coaches could attend during the two 10-day evaluation segments in July. You can add to that 40 events in this past spring's evaluation period and another 81 currently approved for the upcoming Oct. 2-4 fall period.
Of course, I'm only talking about events during the approved recruiting periods for college coaches. There's a whole separate schedule of events going on throughout the rest of the year that add to those totals and create the massive competitive environment that's now non-scholastic girls basketball. When you throw the boys' side of things into the mix as well as traditional high school basketball it's been estimated that about 23 million kids play basketball.
With that many athletes and so many events there are a lot of different interests being served. For the athletes it's the development of their game and the exposure to college recruiters that might lead them to scholarship opportunities.
For the event operators it's often their livelihood or, for some, the chance to channel financial resources into their own club's operating budget. College coaches' interests lie in the most cost-effective means of evaluating talent and establishing a deep data base of prospective recruits. Shoe and apparel companies have their own agendas that ultimately are commercially related.
With so much, growth, participation and the vast array of interests being served, it's no surprise that there are issues in the game. Along with all that other growth the number of those issues seems to be multiplying yearly as well.
The only real structure to non-scholastic basketball has come from the guidelines the NCAA has established through the years regulating the recruiting efforts of their institutions. Recruiting calendars, event and coach certification, as well as contact and evaluation limitations have all stemmed from the NCAA and the respective coaches associations. Indirectly, the governing of youth basketball has come from the residual impact of recruiting legislation.
Without delving into the debate of where the responsibility lies for them, it's safe to say that unrest in the basketball community from top to bottom is growing, and change is on the way. Just what form that change may take is still a cloudy issue and may well get cloudier before things clear up.
On June 9, the NBA and the NCAA announced a joint youth basketball initiative called iHoops. While it won't be backed by Steve Jobs and the financial resources of Apple, there's a little seed money rumored to be in the neighborhood of $30 million provided half each by the NCAA and NBA.
The stated intent of iHoops is "to provide a structure and to develop programs to improve the quality of youth basketball in order to enhance the athletic, educational and social experience of the participants [and] provide supporting services and programs for youth basketball players ages 6 to 18, their parents, coaches, officials and team and event administrators."
Despite the noble intent and tremendous resources a lot of skepticism and raised eyebrows have been directed at iHoops right from the start. A for-profit operation, they'll not only have to mind the shop in the gym they'll have to do so on the bottom line as well. Seems folks aren't too sure the interests of youth basketball can best be served when decisions are made that might put financial concerns in front of the concerns of the sport and its athletes.
Last weekend in Las Vegas, Mike Flynn, the Blue Star and U.S. Junior National chief, gathered a group of stakeholders from both the girls' and boys' side of the game to discuss and ultimately launch another initiative, Youth Basketball 21. Flynn cites YB21 as an opportunity to "let the basketball community know that youth basketball can provide information and opportunity in a responsible and organized manner." Flynn added, "From this past June until next June will be the most important time in youth basketball history. This is our chance to do this right and I think that's evidenced by those present."
YB21 will have the transparency of being a nonprofit entity but will ultimately have to shake the "self-serving" label. Additionally, with the NCAA being in the delivery room for iHoops there may well be an uphill climb to be positioned as the caretaker for non-scholastic events involving college recruiters.
Other than their differing financial frameworks, both initiatives have similar goals and commitments despite their different origins and perspectives. The approach that each may take towards those goals could have a lasting impact on every player, coach, club, event operator and recruiter with an interest in the game. Change is coming and just who might be shaping it is something people need to be paying attention to.
The disappointing thing right now is how seemingly uninformed so many of the entities who will be impacted by these changes are. When you consider all those tournaments, all the participants, parents and coaches, as well as the college folks roaming the sidelines, it's a large constituency. Despite all the discussion of the NBA/NCAA initiative "on the horizon" over the last few years, very few folks can connect the dots to iHoops and with YB21 just being formed and announced, the knowledge and understanding of the masses is minimal.
We'll be detailing more on the initiatives and the potential changes in youth basketball in the future. More important at this point is a "call to arms" so to speak. Not in the sense of choosing sides or taking shots at one group or the other. The call is to become informed and knowledgeable on what's happening in the game and how different decisions might have an impact on the landscape of the game.
As coaches we tell athletes time and again to take ownership in their play and their team. The "players" in youth basketball need to take ownership of their game and that starts with education and participation in their future.
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Mark Lewis is the National Recruiting Coordinator for ESPN HoopGurlz. Twice ranked as one of the top 25 assistant coaches in the game by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association, he has more than 20 years of college coaching experience at Memphis State, Cincinnati, Arizona State, Western Kentucky and, most recently, Washington State. He can be reached at mark@hoopgurlz.com.
