Hoop Masters Develops Good Basketball "People"

Chris Chandler
Mirror contributing writer

It's 2:30 on Sunday at the small gym at University High. John Fisher, founder of Hoop Masters, is running his team through a set of "early offense in transition" drills. You know, the kind of thing we all keep hoping the Lakers will run? This team of 6th grade boys, along with three more of the thirteen Hoop Master teams, have made it into the National Championship Tournament of the Amateur Athletic Union, and Fisher wants them to be sharp, very sharp.

In a side room, Lauren Kelly, co-founder of the program with John, is debriefing her team of 6th grade girls—another team on its way to national competition this summer. The girls have just finished a "light practice" today, a 2-3 mile run followed by shooting drills for an hour. They are taking it easy because they are all still sore from the squat-thrust exercises Kelly ran at the last practice. When asked if Coach Kelly's practices are tough, #21 Amanda McGrew shoots back: "They are only tough if you're not trying your hardest to start with." "They demand perfection," adds #10 London King, the team's point guard. The girls laugh and smile, but watching them play a small scrimmage after practice, its obvious that they've got some serious basketball skills. Hoop Masters began in 1993 as an outgrowth of a series of basketball skills workshops that Kelly and Fisher organized at a Westwood recreational center. "Parents kept asking us to do more with their kids," says Fisher "and we soon ran out of gym time at that recreation center, so we expanded the program into a club team—he Hoop Masters."

"We had one boy's and one girl's team when we started, and this year we have 8 boy's and 5 girl's teams" Fisher says of the growth of the program. "We have about 125 families participating, and some of them have more than one child in the program, so I'd say we have about 150 kids on our teams. We've worked with kids as young as 4 and our oldest team is the 8th graders."

Hoop Masters doesn't run a program for high schoolers because, Fisher says "High school basketball is so dominating of a young person's life these days that running a traveling high school team just isn't feasible. Most high school teams now run practices in the Spring and Summer."

From the beginning, Fisher and Kelly were interested in teaching more than just skills to their kids. Kelly admits that she and Fisher take different approaches to their coaching duties, but they agree completely on the general philosophy of teaching kids. "We use competitive basketball as a means to develop better people," says Kelly, "as a result, children and young adults are expected to perform well at home and in school, and they learn about focus, discipline, team work, conflict resolution, sports (wo)manship and the value of physical endurance."

A group of parents watching the practice on Sunday seems to agree that Hoop Masters has been good for their children in more ways than the basketball skills they've acquired. "It's helped London learn a lot about discipline and hard work" says her mom Monique. Janine Brownstone adds that her daughter Jordana has "met a lot of people from places outside her normal 'westside' experience, and that's been great." Jeanine McGrew says that the team is like an extended family, and that the biggest lesson her daughter Amanda has learned is "the value of hard work and the importance of sportsmanship."

In the past, Hoop Masters has run programs for parents who would like to start their own workshops, but according to Fisher, "mostly our job is education. Some parents don't know the basics of the game and we try to help them there. We also try to help parents understand how to navigate the maze of high school and college basketball—how to choose a good program and a good school." "For college," Fisher continues, "most of our kids aren't going to be Division 1A players, and the Division II and III teams don't usually have the budget to do a lot of recruiting, so they have to kind of take what comes to them. We want to help the parents be active participants in the recruiting process.

"Kelly explains that "we can't work directly with high school coaches because of rules about recruiting, but I can say to a girl 'you're not going to get big minutes at Crenshaw, but maybe you'll get some playing time at X, Y, or Z." This year Kelly and Fisher were able to help connect several of their kids with the Minority Alliance to help get them scholarships to private schools like Brentwood and Harvard Westlake. The success of Hoop Masters has bred its own problems however, the program is running up against another resource shortage this season, and expects it to be even harder next year. "I've never been a part of something that's grown so fast, and where that growth has been so dangerous," Kelly says, shaking her head. Just administering the gym time has become a real chore. This season, Kelly, Fisher and the rest of the Hoop Masters team has had to schedule 130 hours a week at various recreation centers, as well as public and private high schools for practices and games.

"There are definite limits to growth of a 'club' basketball team. After 150 kids, you start to run out of practice facilities, but more importantly coaches," is how Fisher describes the problem. "We spend a lot of time training coaches in order to maintain an 8 to 1 ratio between kids and coaches. Some coaches come to us with a lot of knowledge of the game but not too strong teaching skills, and others have good teaching skills but are not knowledgeable enough about the game of basketball."

"What we would really like is our own facility with at least four full courts," explains Kelly. "That way we can involve many more kids at many different and appropriate levels." To get there they will need more substantial volunteer help than they get now. "We're probably talking about a corporation or a concerned and wealthy individual," admits John. It is not hard imagining the team getting to their goals. When asked to name the major lesson they took away from last years national tournament, the girls are unanimous "never give up" they smile as they head back to the court, glad to get back to the game.