Understanding the Shine Difference

Coach Rob offers some perspective on the advantages and disadvantages of various basketball environments, including Clubs and Feeder Teams, and recommends an effective way to create the perfect development plan for your player.

I get a lot of questions from people asking what Shine is all about.  I understand why they are asking – it’s because we are very different. Our concept is unique and, while it’s highly effective, it’s a different approach than what is out there. To help, let me take a second and draw a comparison between Shine and two other more familiar types of programs – “Club Teams” and “Feeder Programs”.  

Before I start, let me share with you that I have been a Director for a typical Club Program, a four-year Colorado High School Coach, as well as a Head Coach for a Colorado High School Feeder program so these observations come from personal and direct experience. And, while what I am going to describe is relevant for the majority of programs out there, I am not saying that everyone is created equal. There are some strong programs here in Colorado that place player development on a personal and athletic basis as a core priority and walk it out every day in their interaction with their players and families. There are many others nationally that do the same. This article will illustrate some differences in the emphasis on training and development of your player from each of these programs, and to help educate you to the choices you have as an athlete and parent of an athlete. I think you will come to realize that the answer is not an either-or choice, but a proper combination of all of these options, at the proper time, to accomplish your goals! See you on the court!

Shine Basketball Academy
The Shine Academy is a true player development process for athletes that want to build real basketball skill and IQ and who are willing to work with discipline and consistency. We are also a great fit for parents who value a high-character environment that demands excellence in attitude and effort and that partners with them to instill life skills and values for success on and off the court. We build well-rounded, capable basketball contributors that can have success on any team at any level. We DO hold tryouts and evaluate players for Shine teams that play in various environments year-round. The games, however, are an extension of our training plan for each player – a chance for us to measure the player’s progress as an individual contributor, and to assess less tangible elements like confidence, courage, and game IQ. Feedback from each game is collected and integrated into the specific development plan for each athlete which is executed in subsequent workouts and training.

Characteristics of the Shine Academy:

1. Open to all players.
2. Individual player development plans created.
3. Players taught how to establish a personal training habit.
4. Training led by experienced trainers, coaches, and players (must meet minimum pre-qualifications)
5. Teams are selected from evaluation of players inside and outside of the Academy. Players must compete for their roster spot every 4 months – they have to re-earn their place every time (just like life!)

Benefits of the Shine Basketball Academy:

1. Year-round player development.
2. Individual attention and progressive training for each player.
3. Flexibility – train and play with Shine, or train with Shine and play with other programs.
4. No “politics” or “cliques” – We are not competing with anyone else in this space – we’re supporting all club programs, feeder teams and high schools by educating players on how to establish a work habit and by putting in specific work with players to be successful wherever they play, inside or outside of Shine.
5. Players build skills and gain exposure for high school, junior college, and college-level opportunities.

Some other programs are threatened by us for fear of “losing” a player to Shine. Fact is, players and families are getting smarter about where to invest their time and are making more educated decisions about the best path for their player. We don’t talk anyone out of participating with a club or feeder team. We center our focus around a wholistic development plan for each player, and we educate families on the options available to them based on their goals. Decisions about where to invest their time and money are made by the families.

Realities of training with Shine:

1. We are not for everyone – if you want to skip the training and just play on a team, we’re not for you.
2. Guaranteed results – if you work our system seriously, you will improve, making you more valuable as a contributor for any team, anywhere.
3. Uncomfortable is normal – Players training in our environment are uncomfortable most of the time – they make mistakes instantly and continuously as they progress rapidly. Again, not a good fit if you can’t handle being exposed consistently (though it’s the only way to grow!)
4. Emphasis is on the development of each player rather than team wins. However, the more developed the players, the more successful the teams perform, and the quality of basketball played elevates.
5. Level of play decisions for our teams is based exclusively on the proper environment in which our athletes can receive suitable skill and IQ challenges, while having a good measure of success in competition. We realize that each athlete’s progression is a process of training, competition, recovery and more training over an extended period of time. With that perspective, there is no need to over-emphasize results from a specific game or season, or to boast about win-loss records. Our emphasis is on the PROCESS of growth and development, personally and athletically, for our athletes.

Club Programs
Because everything they do is built around their brand and reputation, the success of CLUB TEAMS becomes critical to remaining a “best” program in the public’s estimation and to future prospective players. The measurement of their quality as a program is based primarily on the resume of wins and championships they accumulate, along with the lists of players they publish whom have worn their jerseys and whom have gone on to play after graduation from high school. Joining a “club team” brings with it a sense of loyalty and unity (a great thing) but also by the nature of the environment creates an “us against them”, status-based culture whereby each club competes with others in the market for notoriety as the area’s/region’s/nation’s “top ranked” program.

Recruitment, not player development, is the name of the game for most of these programs. Not necessarily because these programs don’t care about developing players – ask any of the program Directors about their Mission or visit their website and you will hear about how player development, character, and life success principles are part of the program’s core values. But watch a typical practice or ask a parent of a “club” player how satisfied they are with the development of their son/daughter as a contributing teammate and you will find that unless players arrived with pre-taught skills and capabilities, the club experience typically does not provide adequate attention and direction for individual players seeking to improve.

Many players seek acceptance to these programs because they, like most of us, want to be a part of a winning experience. Often times, however, these programs either don’t have the time or the patience to engage each player and address their individual development needs. What the player brings to the tryouts is the basis for the level of team they are selected for, if they are selected at all. The “best” (most athletic, biggest, strongest) players are selected first and to the top teams. The question is: what happens to the majority of other players who are investing the same time, money, and attention to the club environment? In many cases, these players hang on to their status as a part of a winning program, but soon realize (often in hindsight when it’s too late)  that they did not become the player they could have been because there was not enough focus on their own personal development.

Characteristics of Club Teams:

1. Recruit the “best”players possible to build and maintain the program’s status in the market
2. Coaching quality varies: former players of various levels of experience and success, skills trainers (rare) and motivated parents.
3. Marketing is based on the success of program to attract high-caliber players.

Benefits of Club Teams:

1. Belonging to a “known” program.
2. Travel and exposure to college coaches for next-level opportunities – benefits players who have developed skills, attitude, academics, and character that colleges are looking for.
3. Learning team concepts in the system being taught in your club.
4. Making friends, having experiences, creating memories.

Realities of Club Teams:

1. Emphasis is on the success of the brand over the success of the player. (If the club does not post a winning record, the public associates that as an indication that the quality of the program is poor and more kids won’t come.)
2. Top players get top attention, but still not much development. Teams are built around the most athletic, strongest, fastest kids that arrive at tryouts. (The “Let’s see what we’ve got” vs. “Let’s see what we can develop” mentality.)
3. Practices center around team concepts and conditioning.
4. Game strategies and “plays” are designed around the team’s present skills and abilities and compensate for individual player deficiencies. Correction of the deficiencies is not a top priority due primarily to a lack of time or training experience in developing kids.
5. Level of play decisions wrestle between entering the team into higher “competitive” divisions (helps the brand) vs. playing the team in a level more realistic for their present developmental status, giving the kids an opportunity to experience both success and challenge as they play (helps the player).

Feeder Teams
Feeder teams are designed to provide a consistent, reliable source of incoming players for a particular high school. Like Club programs, they hold tryouts to select players for their teams and seek to field as many teams, at as many levels as possible. Players selected are typically grouped by current grade so as to establish “classes” of teams that can play and grow familiar with each other over time, thereby ensuring that the high school program will have a good selection of players from which to choose come tryouts in November. While there are a few well-developed feeder programs in the area that are tightly integrated into the high schools, many of these programs are led and organized by parents of players, sometimes on a volunteer basis. The quality of coaching varies greatly within most of these programs, with game emphasis often being reduced to pursuing wins. Feeder teams compete in the same leagues as the club programs do, and like the club environment, there exists a competitive “jockeying” for rankings and best win/loss records. For the feeders, this translates into a more positive public impression of the quality of the basketball program at the respective school, and hopefully translates into a stronger desire for players to attend and play at that institution.

Characteristics of Feeder Teams:

1. They are designed to assemble teams of players that will attend the same high school in the future.
2. Players are selected through tryouts and are evaluated on what skills and abilities they bring to the gym. Teams are grouped by skill and athleticism.
3. Coaching quality varies: former players of various levels of experience and success, skills trainers (rare) and motivated parents.

Benefits of Feeder Teams:

1. Players build friendships and familiarity with kids who will be candidates for the same high school teams.
2. Players could potentially learn some of the “systems” which the high schools run and get introduced to the style of play they could expect at the next level.
3. The school benefits by establishing an unspoken “loyalty” to their school through participation in the teams, helping them build (aka “feed”) their present and future basketball program.

Realities of Feeder Teams:

1. Aside from a few exceptions, Feeder Teams’ practices focus primarily on scrimmaging, shooting drills, and conditioning. Due to the diverse nature of the experience of the coaches, little to no emphasis is placed on developing any individual player’s skills.
2. There is an underlying “pressure” to participate in these teams for fear of a player not being seen as “all-in” with the high school program and thereby experiencing some bias when time comes to select players for the actual high school teams. No coach will openly admit this, but it’s a reality. Kids that show up to “open gyms”, who participate in “summer leagues” and “team camps” are perceived as motivated and accumulate “credit” in the coach’s mind which can pay dividends at the team selection time. (This is explicitly prohibited by the Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA), by the way (see below).)
3. Level of play decisions wrestle between entering the team into higher “competitive” divisions (helps the HS program’s reputation) vs. playing the team in a level more realistic for their present developmental status, giving the kids an opportunity to experience both success and challenge as they play (helps the player).

FACT: A student cannot be required to practice or compete outside of the season as a condition of making the team. – CHSAA Bylaws (click to see full article)

What’s the best option?
​As I said at the start, now that you have a better understanding of the differences, advantages, and realities of each type of program, hopefully you see that as a serious player – or parent of a serious player – the decision is not which one to choose, but rather, how to integrate each of the available options to support your player’s long-term goals and ambitions related to basketball.

Developing a player’s basketball skill and IQ, or ANY skill and IQ, is a process of making daily decisions about where to invest your time for the greatest return. This is an individual decision that is unique for each player and cannot be made as a consensus or with a desire to “follow the crowd”.

The Shine Basketball Academy is the thread that connects a player’s experience in club ball and feeder teams throughout their basketball career. We do what the other programs don’t have the time or experience to do – focus on your player’s individual development needs, tell them the truth, and provide the tools and environment for them to grow and become a true contributor for whatever team they play – inside or outside of Shine, in middle school, high school, junior college, college, or beyond.

Contact us today to get more information or to request access to our training environment or teams. We will help you identify where you are today, and support you on your journey to where you want to go! If you have questions, contact me directly for a personal consultation about your options. I’m at 303-591-4022 or email shinebasketballacademy@gmail.com. 
​See you on the court!