I found this journal entry that I wrote back in 2015. Crazy to look back on the journey, and blessed to continue to lead Shine! By Coach Rob Pierson
July 23, 2015 Everyone has a story. This is Shine’s. This is the story of how Shine came to be. It all started 15 years ago when I moved to Colorado from Seattle, WA to marry my wife, Marie. As we got our life together underway, I had a thought to volunteer some time coaching at the YMCA. I had played ball growing up at the Middle School, Varsity, and College level so I figured I knew a thing or two about the game. How hard could coaching be, after all? Well, when they assigned my first group of little kids to my team, I realized very quickly how challenging this new “hobby” was going to be. I had no idea at the time how much preparation, patience, vision, energy, enthusiasm, communication, and leadership was required to be a coach. And moreover, I realized how much I did not know about teaching basketball. Just because you play something well does not mean you can teach someone else how to do it. (Don’t believe me? Try teaching someone else how to whistle and you’ll get a sense of what I’m talking about.) I hung in there, though, and all in all I ended up spending 12 years coaching through the YMCA. Three seasons per year x 12 years = 36 seasons of teaching the sport. And unlike my fellow coaches, I did not ever request to keep a team together season to season. I figured that if I did a good job, the kids and parents would be very satisfied and they would come back. Well, turns out I became pretty good at improving the players who worked with me, and they started to come back in droves – often times many more kids than could fit on my 10-person roster. Parents would try and sign up two seasons in advance sometimes just to get on my team. The beginning of something great was starting to happen. A few years after I started YMCA coaching, my step-son started taking a greater interest in playing competitive sports – football, baseball, and…basketball. At first he signed up to play with other “club” basketball teams, but after watching those coaches screaming at my 12-year old son and his teammates, demanding wins and ignoring fundamental development, I became unsettled. I thought, “These young teams may win games now by sheer athleticism, but what happens when they get older and their skills matter more? What then?” This thought bothered me more and more, until I finally made a move and started my first program, Extreme Basketball. Extreme was going to be a “different” program, focused on teaching the game the right way instead of focusing on wins. We were popular because we were new, and my reputation as a coach in the area carried over to Extreme and we soon had 11 teams playing in local tournaments every year. But while we grew in headcount, I soon realized that all I had done was started another “club” and the overarching focus of the teams once again shifted to wins and losses. Parents and players who came to Extreme brought with them the same desire to win and hoist trophies, and very few of the athletes had any inclination to actually train to develop their skills. I found myself smack in the middle of the same problem I saw in the other programs – and this time it was my own program! In Extreme’s second year, I was still frustrated with the focus of the program, and I realized that if things were going to be different a whole new approach was needed. I began to see that the problem was more than just what was being taught and emphasized at practices. The culture of competitive basketball (and many other youth sports) in the U.S. was shifting to an emphasis on “rankings” and “standings” rather than fundamental development. Programs were making money hand over fist by selling the public on the “exposure” that they would provide athletes if they played for them. But nowhere in that noise could I find any calling for players who wanted to put in work – who wanted to develop a work HABIT. I realized that what was needed was something new. (What was needed was Shine…) After shutting down Extreme, I spent the next three years networking with colleges around the country, asking as many coaches as I could what they would like to see in their incoming recruits by way of skills, character, basketball IQ, conditioning, and competitiveness. I sought out player development trainers and programs from around the country, like PGC Basketball, Micah Landcaster, Damin Altzier, Alan Stein, Dre Baldwin, Taylor Allan, and others who focused on skill development as a foundation of building great players. I studied their work, attended their camps, volunteered at their training sessions, and made personal contact with everyone I could. I watched hundreds of hours of training and coaching videos from the greatest basketball minds today, and from the past. I listened to countless podcasts, studied leadership and motivational speakers, world leaders, and business tycoons. I poured myself into it the study of what it truly took to become great – and I got very excited! What I found was a common thread that connected every single one of these elite trainers, programs, and coaches, business leaders and speakers. What I discovered was the secret to becoming great – not just at basketball – but in life. The secret is #thePROCESS. “To accomplish anything great in life, to realize our God-given potential and make the maximum impact possible on our world and lives, we have to embrace our own process of personal growth, self-evaluation, persistent effort, repeated failure, and incremental breakthroughs! And not just once, but over and over all of our lives in everything we do! That’s #thePROCESS.” – Coach Rob Along the way I spent two years as a Varsity High School coach, traveled the AAU Circuit with a National 17U team where we played in some of the largest venues in the country (Nike Tournament of Champions, Oasis Invitational, Nike End of Trail, USJN/Blue Star Media, to name a few), and became a contributing author for Stack.com Magazine. Fast forward to today. Shine Basketball Academy stands as Colorado’s most innovative, motivational, inspirational, and empowering basketball enivronment available. We started just a year ago with 24 kids in a gym and now, just 10 months later, we’ve worked with over 200 young athletes who show up week in and week out to grind out their PROCESS. The prior frustrations about an over-emphasis on winning before work are long gone. (Frankly, the athletes and families who subscribe to that line of thought don’t stick around. We work out that attitude by out-working those kids!) Our gyms are now full of motivated, humble, competitive young men and women who have bought into the truth that they have greatness inside of them screaming to get out, and they are working every night to peel back their fear and self-doubt and replace it with courage and self-confidence built upon consistently improving skills, attitude and work ethic. It’s crazy to consider where this journey has taken me so far, and so exciting to think about the countless lives we’re going to be able to impact through Shine into the future! If you’ve never been to one of our workouts, I personally invite you to come experience the “Shine Difference”. I promise we’ll make you feel at home! See you in the gym! – Coach Rob |
AuthorCoach Rob Pierson is the Director and Lead Trainer for the Shine Basketball Academy in Broomfield, CO. Archives
May 2023
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