Utah HS Hoops Podcast
Utah HS Hoops Podcast
1 - Welcome to the Utah HS Hoops Pod!
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-19:10

1 - Welcome to the Utah HS Hoops Pod!

Warning...this is going to be fun and wildly imperfect

Welcome to episode 1! This should be interesting

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Here’s a summary of the episode from Deciphr.ai (apologies for any errors or typos)

About The Guest(s):

Adam Peek is the host of the People of Packaging Podcast and an ordained Southern Baptist minister. He has a passion for basketball and has played and coached at various levels. Adam is also a huge Denver Nuggets fan and resides in West Jordan, Utah.

Summary:

Adam Peek introduces his new podcast focused on Utah high school boys basketball. He discusses his background, including hosting the People of Packaging Podcast and his love for basketball. Adam highlights the vibrant basketball community in Utah and the growing opportunities for players. He shares his excitement for the upcoming basketball season and the potential of the Class of 2026. Adam also mentions his intention to bring on a variety of guests, including coaches, trainers, parents, and players, to discuss the sport in Utah.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Utah has a vibrant basketball community with growing opportunities for players.

  2. The Class of 2026 in Utah high school basketball is highly talented and has the potential to produce future professional players.

  3. Adam Peek aims to bring on a diverse range of guests, including coaches, trainers, parents, and players, to discuss Utah high school basketball.

Quotes:

  • "Utah is a hoop culture. There is literally a basketball hoop everywhere around this state." - Adam Peek

  • "The Class of 2026 might be the best class in Utah high school basketball history." - Adam Peek

  • "I'm not trying to replace anything here. I just want to talk about the sport that I love in the state where I love living." - Adam Peek

[TRANSCRIPT]

0:00:01 - (Adam Peek): Hey, what is good? Utah high school hoops fans? This is a exciting moment for me because I've wanted to do this podcast here for a while. This is the introduction episode to this podcast. As far as I can tell, it is the only podcast currently focused on Utah high school boys basketball. And I'm sure there's a very good reason why. That is a very niche thing to talk about on a podcast. But isn't that kind of what podcasting is about?

0:00:37 - (Adam Peek): It's about being able to take very small things and have a group of people and we can talk about it together because it is a big deal here in our state. I am not native to Utah, so I'm going to take a little bit of time here, introduce myself. I'm going to talk about why I care about this. I'm going to talk about what this podcast is, what it is know, suggesting different guests. How can you do that? How can we get people on it, all sorts of stuff and then we'll tie it up. I don't know. It's not going to be a very long episode. You can tell if you're listening to it right now. You can tell how long it's going to be.

0:01:17 - (Adam Peek): So who am I? I've been hosting a podcast now for five years. Not this one and not about basketball at all. So I've hosted a podcast in the packaging industry called the People of Packaging Podcast. And five years ago, when this started, it was a similar kind of deal, right? This important thing, this cool thing. In this case, it was a large industry, a global industry that didn't have any podcasting about it. And so I started it, and it has taken me to some really awesome places.

0:01:51 - (Adam Peek): I've been able to speak in front of some great groups of people. I got to speak before Magic Johnson at an event that was really awesome. Been able to travel the world with this industry. It's been great. I love it. I have a second love in terms my family and Jesus. So I'm a pastor as well. I'm an ordained Southern Baptist minister, pastored, churches for, let's see, I think about ten years, 1011 years prior to moving to Utah five years ago.

0:02:25 - (Adam Peek): So that's a little bit about my background. So if you have connected and followed me on LinkedIn, I have this moniker, which is the Packaging Pastor. And that's really silly and fun, but I love basketball, so I have loved basketball since the time I was a kid. I was born in 1980. I grew up in we'll call it the golden age of basketball. I thought it was the golden age of mean, you know, Jordan and Pippen and the Bulls and then, you know, us kind of at the tail end of the Lakers and Celtics and you had the Pistons.

0:03:00 - (Adam Peek): And it wasn't like beautiful basketball, but it felt like it was was the first true global superstar of this sport. And before for those of you who don't know, before Magic and Larry came on the scene, you couldn't even really watch basketball games live. They were all recorded. And so I was kind of part of the first generation to really grow up not the first generation to love basketball, but to really grow up with basketball being a dominant sport. And now it is a dominant sport globally.

0:03:35 - (Adam Peek): So it's really great. I think it's one of the greatest sports. It's like jazz music. It's a little bit chaos with organization and there's the games within the games. I love all this stuff. I'm also a huge Denver Nuggets fan living in Salt Lake City, Utah. So if you are watching this podcast and I hope to be able to do some live events on Twitter, X or on YouTube, and I'll let you know how you can watch those when they come up. But if you are watching this, you would see on my head is Maxi the Minor. It's one of my favorite hats. I got it for Father's Day probably six years ago, which is an old Denver Nuggets like Aba logo. And then behind me, I've got a Denver Nuggets 20 22, 23 championship banner because they are the reigning NBA World champions and they're looking good. As of this recording, they are three and O and just absolutely smacked Oklahoma City and it was glorious to see.

0:04:36 - (Adam Peek): So that's kind of a little about me. I live here in West Jordan. I've played basketball my whole life. I've coached high school. I've had a little bit of college experience. I was a practice player manager at Colorado State, which is where I got to learn from guys like Buzz Williams and Coach Dale Lair. I got to do a little bit of that was called character coaching with Utah or with the Utah Prep, the Air Force Prep school when I was a pastor out in Colorado Springs, my high school coach, Coach Cavara, is the coach of the Air Force Prep team. So that was really great.

0:05:16 - (Adam Peek): I have enjoyed being here in Utah because Utah sorry, Colorado, but I'm not utah is a hoop culture. It just know whether you like it or is there is literally a basketball hoop, an indoor basketball hoop. And you probably know someone who's got keys to that basketball hoop everywhere around this whole a lot there's a lot of really great football players who come from here. I'm sure there's a lot of great other players. Someone's going to be like, what about this know?

0:05:50 - (Adam Peek): I don't know. I just know about basketball. So I've been able to help out with a few AAU teams throughout the year. I've coached a few AAU teams. I was actually the head coach at varsity team at Intermountain Christian School last year. So just been in it been in this cool culture and I've really been enjoying it. And so I thought well, we should talk about this. We should talk about this sport in this state because it's beautiful.

0:06:24 - (Adam Peek): It's a beautiful state with a great and vibrant basketball community that very few people actually know about. And I think they're learning. They're learning about it. The Prospect 17 U team won the three SSB last year. That was a really big deal. I think did a lot to put Utah on the national map. Certainly we've had players come from here, but it seems like we're getting more and more traction, right? We've got wasatch Academy. It's bringing in kids from internationally.

0:06:54 - (Adam Peek): You've got Layton christian, you've got Utah Prep. My son just to put all the bias out there. My son plays at Judge Memorial Catholic and they're growing. You've got kids transferring and all sorts of just stuff that's happening. And the reason it's happening is because there's so much opportunity. There's so much opportunity coming from the state, so many opportunities to get better. There are a handful. I mean, maybe even a dozen teams that are playing on some type of national shoe circuit.

0:07:29 - (Adam Peek): That's pretty wild. And I don't know the history. So if you're going to come at me with, well, back in the 80s in Utah, let me tell you about, well, I don't know what that was. I can't talk to that. And I'm not going to even try to. I'm not going to pretend to. If you want to come on the podcast and talk about it, then let's totally do that, right? But that's not going to be me. I'm just going to talk about it from my perspective and hopefully balance out my perspective by bringing people on the podcast to talk with them.

0:07:55 - (Adam Peek): And it's not going to be people, just the same people that maybe you've heard from, I hope to get people on who are the people who know kind of the power brokers of high school basketball here in Utah. I would love to talk with them. I've not yet to meet somebody who I'm just like, that is a wicked human being. I assume good intentions with everybody. And to be totally fair, I don't have any sort of end game here other than to talk about the sport that I love in the state where I love living.

0:08:27 - (Adam Peek): And to be totally fair, why is this podcast now? I've noticed that so my son is in the class of 2026, and there's just some players and just talking to people around here who have been in Utah for a while, they're like, well, this might be the best class in Utah high school basketball history. And I don't know this stuff. I know they're really freaking good at basketball. And I know there's going to be a lot of kids who are going to surprise a lot of people.

0:08:58 - (Adam Peek): I would not surprise me in that class if there are half a dozen or more kids who get paid to play basketball at some level beyond college. So I think it's a really special class and it's only getting better. The Placid twins just transferred in from my home state, if you're listening to this. Listen, I hope you're Nuggets fans because we need more Nuggets fans here in the state. I show up to Jazz Nuggets games, by the way. Every time I do, it seems like the Nuggets lose.

0:09:30 - (Adam Peek): And that's okay. It's fine, because you know why? Because the Denver Nuggets won the NBA Championship. So you can't tell me anything, can't tell me nothing about on I'm still on cloud nine about, you know, we got kids transferring in to Utah because we have such a vibrant hoop culture, and I think that's really cool. So what is it going to be about? I hope you've already kind of caught a little bit of the gist have.

0:09:55 - (Adam Peek): Like, I reached out to a director of a national shoe circuit, and he was, like, pumped about this because he sees what's happening in Utah. He sees what our teams are doing, and he wants to come on and talk what what they're doing in their circuit. I've got some college coaches. I've got some high school. My if you don't know my sister, she's the NBA draft analyst for Yahoo. Sports, and she's at a whole different level than I will ever be when it comes to this thing.

0:10:26 - (Adam Peek): But she can't touch me on the packaging scene. Let's just not get that twisted, right? Like, not at all. That's my domain. But if you want to start a podcast KP on packaging, you totally go for it. Just go for it. But I'd love to have her on some of the people who are running the younger grassroots stuff. That would be great. My budy Brad is a ref. He's one of the highest level referees here in the state of Utah. I want to have him come on and talk about officiating.

0:10:57 - (Adam Peek): Listen, this is free. It's free for you. If you're listening right now, take this advice. Put it away. You do not have a better view on what's happening from the stands than the trained referees have who are on the court. All right? You don't know the rules as well as they do. Now you can get frustrated, right? Like, I get frustrated. I say things to the refs all the time. Of course they're human. They miss stuff, all that. But show up to games, cheer for your kid, don't yell at your kid's coach, because, listen, most of these coaches are either not getting paid anything or they're getting paid very little. And if you want to go put in the hours that they are, I'm sure that you can go volunteer to help coach, right?

0:11:43 - (Adam Peek): So just show up and cheer for your kid, please. You don't need to be badmouthing anybody. You don't need to be yelling at referees. You don't need to be yelling, especially, like, the other kids. Oh, my gosh, I'll hear parents talking trash to like, 7th graders, and I'm like, what are we doing here? So there's some stuff that we're going to talk about. We're going to get worked through, but my budy Brad's going to come on.

0:12:04 - (Adam Peek): My good friend Pastor Corey Hodges was like, you got to have me. Come on. Corey's the chaplain for the Utah Jazz and has gone through his son AJ. Went through and played high school ball here. So lots of really cool people, even some just like regular guests that want to come on because I don't know. Listen, I just don't know a lot. Like, I know a very small sliver about this space, and it's typically tied to when my child is playing basketball.

0:12:35 - (Adam Peek): I go to those games and I watch them and I see players and I see things that are happening and it's cool, but I don't know about six A and five A and four A and three I don't know two A and one A. I don't know who are the favorites. Can we talk about it? So, like, my guy who runs the rural Utah Sports Twitter, you all should go follow him. He does a great job with one A, two A and three A sports. So I want to have him come on and talk about what's going on at those levels and give everybody an opportunity to shine because I think that's what this is all about, right?

0:13:12 - (Adam Peek): I'm not trying to replace nothing here. Right? The team at Prep Hoops does a good job with they got the rankings and they got their articles and all that. KSL covers it and Desiree News covers it. And I'm sure there's even this he I'm pretty sure he's into basketball, right? Some high school kid down in oh, man, I should probably have looked up his name Trey. Trey talks sports on like, come like, let's talk sports then. Let's have you come on and put me on about people that I don't know anything about.

0:13:44 - (Adam Peek): Although we do have a mutual connection because I coached Big Ty for a little bit when he was in like, 6th grade. Big Ty Cogswell, who sounds like transferred over to Lone Peak, and I'm excited to watch his continued development in his junior year. So I'm just stoked. I'm stoked to talk about these kids and give them an opportunity to hear about what they're doing because the kids who are here who either have a bigger platform or they're the ones who are out there, like, of course we'll talk about kids who are doing great stuff here.

0:14:20 - (Adam Peek): That's not all right. That's not all we're going to do. And so we're going to talk about it. And I'm pretty stoked. So what it won't be about, obviously, is this history of high school basketball. I'm not going to sit here and pretend as though I know everything or that I am the authority on these topics here's. All that I know how to do. This is it. I know how to record podcasts. I have a podcast recording closet in my house that I built specifically to make podcasts.

0:14:51 - (Adam Peek): I can do podcasts remotely. I can do interviews with kids. I have all of this stuff after a game. I can grab a kid and do a quick interview. 1 minute, two minutes, something like that. I have AI tools to transcribe all of this stuff. I know how to put it all out on the substac, which is where I host my people of Packaging podcast. That's where this one's going to come out. I train corporations on how to use social media. So I understand this is the stuff that I understand, right?

0:15:21 - (Adam Peek): But when it comes to what is actually happening, I'm going to be very limited. I have a full time job. I run the world's largest packaging podcast. I have five kids and my guy Solomon King who is here from London, who's living in our house as well. So we've got five kids plus one. I've got an amazing wife. Just the one, just five kids and one wife and that's good enough for me. So I've got a pretty busy schedule, right? So I'm not trying to go around and watch all the games and do all the stuff when I see cool things. Like this weekend I went to the Utah top 50 next, put a couple of kids out there that I was watching play and I was like, man, these kids are balling. And there were more, I just didn't know their names. I had to ask around. Apparently I grabbed one of the sheets and I was like, okay, that's who that kid is. But then I forgot to bring the sheet home with me because this isn't my full time thing, right?

0:16:14 - (Adam Peek): So I'll watch it and I'll talk about kids who are doing great things. I'll be out probably watching some AAU with team Utah and so I'll probably talk disproportionately about things that I see and that's fine, right? We're all going to be biased that way. But like I said, I really hope to balance it out. So it's not going to be comprehensive is what I'm trying to say. This isn't going to be the end all, be all of information about Utah high school basketball.

0:16:42 - (Adam Peek): It's going to be probably pretty biased. I'm going to try my hardest to not make it, but I'm sure I'm going to mess some stuff up and so I would love some grace. So some things that will be really helpful kind of going forward. I'm going to wrap this thing up here. Number one, if we're not connected on Twitter or X, I'm just going to call it Twitter. Is that cool? Like remember when Prince changed his name to the symbol, but we all just kept calling him Prince, may he rest in peace. You remember that? That's kind of how I feel like what's happening with Twitter, it's like Elon Musk is like, no, no, it's going to be this one letter. And we're like, yeah, homie, it's still Twitter, man.

0:17:17 - (Adam Peek): It's still or on Instagram. So connect up with me. Shoot me a DM with just someone who you think has talked to. Maybe it's a coach, maybe it's a trainer, maybe it's a parent, maybe it's a former player, I don't know. But let's connect up and put some people on, right? Especially players. Players don't really have many opportunities to be interviewed, and so it would just be really cool to sit down with a player and chat a little bit. Maybe it's five minutes, doesn't have to be all that long. That would be really great. So DM me on Twitter. DM me on Instagram.

0:17:55 - (Adam Peek): Those are going to be the two best ways. Sure. I'll make an email address. Oh, and on Substack as well. In the show notes, I'll have kind of the links and you'll be able to see those. So that's going to be it. I would love to say that there's going to be a regular cadence to this in terms of when it's going to come out. I'm not going to commit to it. I would love to do this every week. Heck, I would love to do it every day. There's probably enough to talk about during the basketball season and during the club season to do that, but it's not going to happen.

0:18:25 - (Adam Peek): There's just no way. Once a week would be a stretch for me right now. So if you want to know when it's going to come out, you can subscribe on the Substac. That's free. I'm not charging for that. You subscribe on Substack or you can subscribe on wherever you listen to podcasts. This will be out on itunes and Google podcasts and Spotify and Stitcher and PocketCasts and all the places you can listen to podcasts. So thanks so much for tuning in here to this intro.

0:18:57 - (Adam Peek): It's the start of basketball season. Tryouts are coming here in about a week, so I just wanted to get this out, actually, to hold myself accountable, because I want to be held accountable to this. Thanks.

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