What a year it was - an idea that began as “Spring Basketball Camp 2012” has now become an official company, offering and continuing to offer camps, clinics, and private lessons, and elevated the skills of many local youth basketball players. This year, Ballin’ Academy has truly inspired kids to be their best both on and off the court.
The year began late, in the summer of 2013. Ballin’ Academy started with several sessions of weeklong summer camps that consisted of drills, skill work, and mini games until the last hour, in which campers would participate in competitive scrimmages with referees. With such rave reviews from both campers and parents, Ballin’ Academy decided to continue its successful summer by offering clinics on Saturdays and Sundays throughout the rest of the summer. The clinics were very popular, as many of the same parents who signed their children up for the camps came back for the clinics, in hopes that their children could advance their basketball skills further and retain the skills and ideas they had learned previously in summer camp. During the clinics, coaches rotated each Saturday and Sunday, with students learning new techniques and refining old ones from a variety of different coaching perspectives and styles. The clinics offered not only new skills and the refinement of older ones but also stability and confidence for the improving students.
Ballin’ Academy capped off its summer with a big splash. It held two free clinics, offering two hours of basketball training for any youth who was interested with over 80 kids attended each free clinic. The free clinics gave Ballin’ Academy a chance to work with lots of new young students and allowed us to promote itself in the process. In terms of publicity off of the basketball court, Ballin’ Academy made great strides over the course of the year as well. What originally started as a fun idea by the co-founders resulted in articles published in both the Sunnyvale Sun and Cupertino Courier, and Homestead High School’s Epitaph. Later, the San Jose Mercury News featured Ballin’ Academy in their “Inside the Valley” section.
To cap off the year, the academy took all kids who were interested to a Santa Clara University basketball game, completely free of charge. The University hosted Ballin’ Academy, and the kids even had the opportunity to play on the court during half time. It was a great experience for all who attended, and in the future Ballin Academy hopes to continue to provide fun opportunities like these for its students.
What Ballin’ Academy has come to represent over the past year and beyond is not just basketball but community within basketball. At all clinics and camps, coaches encourage students and campers to befriend one another, and to always play the game with the utmost respect for the players, referees, and the coaches. Ballin’ Academy teaches kids that basketball is not just a sport but a community and a family. With the end of an old year comes the beginning of a new one, in which Ballin’ Academy will strive to continue to instill both basketball skills and life values into its players and eventually expand to many other cities throughout the Bay Area.
2013 - A Year in Review
