A parents guide to basketball recruiting - transfers and trainers
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Part 4 of my Parents Guide to Basketball Recruiting (how many will there be? Maybe only 4! I don’t really know) is going to be covering 2 related topics…only related because they start with the same letters.
In case you haven’t read the the first 3 articles, I’m writing these from the perspective of a parent who’s son went through the basketball process in HS and is committed to a college where he will play basketball and get a free education. Over his career, he averaged around 6 ppg, so I hope many parents can relate to my stories and advice. If not, sorry…I tried!
When 9th grade started for my son, he was attending a very small school in Salt Lake City that maybe had 40 boys combined grades 9-12. He was clearly the best player on the Varsity team and his first ever game had 36 points and 17 rebounds in an OT win. As the season went on and teams watched film, they sent double and triple teams at him every game. It was a learning season for him for sure. He ended up All State as a freshman. At the end of the school year, we were faced with a few questions:
If he wanted to play in college, was staying at this school the best option?
Could we afford for him to stay (it was a private Christian school)?
Would he be able to play football and stay at the school (they didn’t have a team)?
Where would he best develop as a young man?
I suspect the right time to make these decisions about transferring is before 9th or 10th grade. Plenty of kids transfer before 11/12th grades, but it gets harder to move schools the later you go.
We called a friend of mine who had coached at the division 1 level and asked him what his thoughts were on staying or going and this was his advice:
Academics can be a huge difference maker, so find a school that is challenging academically and tell him to get the best grades possible
Stats don’t matter as much as parents think. Get in the weight room and eat right. College is a very physical game.
Focus on getting better, getting bigger, and getting connected with coaches
Ultimately, we found a high school with a great academic ranking and made the move knowing full well he might have to sit out playing varsity his sophomore year (he didn’t and the team won the state title which was amazing). He also ended up playing varsity football which I suspect helped his basketball recruiting a bit. Especially learning how to lift and take/give contact.
So we had the academics and physicality part down, but he went from being the best player on a bad team to fighting for minutes on a state championship level team. Now that his team wasn’t dependent on him to score 20 every night, he could start to work with some skills trainers to hone the things he needed to get better at and then work on them in practice and JV games.
Now, there are tons of skills trainers in Utah and I don’t know all of them. Here are the guys my son worked with off and on over 7 years (not all at once though) - Landen Cummings, Corey Smith, Tim and Terence Drisdom, Seena Namdar, Zeus Martinez, and Parker Van Dyke. All of them except for Parker coached AJ’s team at one time or another and worked with him in practice or individually outside of practice. They vary in price but I’d recommend them all if you’re looking for a good skills trainer. As your child progresses, you may want to find trainers who only take certain level of players and turn down others. Those group workouts can be amazing for your kid!
I don’t know that it’s 100% necessary to work with skills trainers though. Just because it was right for us, doesn’t mean it’s right for you and your child. The costs can creep up and if you find a really good club or HS coach to do the work as part of the team participation, it could be really good. What is necessary is to be working on your skill development AND then using them in non game situations like pickup, practice, or sub varsity games. If your player just wants to “get shots up” or “work on their game” but aren’t willing to go out and execute in a game situation, then that work isn’t going to translate.
The questions about transferring and training aren’t black and white. I always suggest talking with people who have gone through it and not just the people who will benefit from you making the decisions. Example, if there’s a coach who tells you something like “if you stay, you’ll never get recruited” or a trainer who says something similar…I’d run from them. Maybe they want what’s best for you and your child, but more often than not…they just want your money and/or your child to help them win.
Should I keep these going? Let me know!