Factory Basketball's vision can be summarized in three words: Building Better Athletes, but this is bigger than just offering basketball teams where young athletes can compete and improve their skills. It is even bigger than helping girls obtain athletic scholarships. We want to build a better model of how youth sports should operate, and hopefully change the world for the better through our work. We want to create better basketball players, yes. But we also want to create healthier individuals. We want to help prevent costly and painful injuries in youth sports. We want to create healthy life balances. We want to positively influence the system that is in place in the recruiting process. And we want to educate young athletes on how to make wise decisions by viewing them through a 40 year lense rather than a 4 year lense. We believe that opening our Factory Training Center in the heart of the Westland, Plymouth, Canton, Northville, Novi and Livonia area will be a huge step in accomplishing these goals.
Skill development
Skill development is a core value of Factory Basketball. We live this value out by our focus on skill development in our practices. But despite the time we currently put into skill development in our team basketball practices, it just is not enough. Skills like shooting require a significant amount of individual attention. The kind of attention that can only exist in individual and small group lessons, where a coach can give the athlete the individual attention and time needed to make necessary corrections, and the athlete can get enough supervised repetitions to make the necessary changes required for improvement. Our old model of renting gym space at local schools did not allow for these critical individual and small group training sessions to exist. One of the biggest things I have learned as a coach and parent of a collegiate basketball player, is that time goes by way too fast, and before you know it, windows of opportunity close. The most critical skill every basketball player must improve is their shooting form. High school seasons pass in the blink of an eye, with no time to make necessary improvements. These improvements only happen in the athlete's time away from the team logging hours of work. Operating our own Factory Basketball Training Center will allow us to offer these critical training sessions, and offer our athletes a place to get up extra shots, additional ball handling, etc. that will allow them to realize thier true potential.
The Mental Game
It really doesn't matter how athletic or skilled a young basketball player is, if they have no understanding of the mental side of the game. If they do not know how to make smart decisions on the court, or are not mentally strong, they will fail during crunch time. I have devoted countless hours to studying the mental side of sports, and my past teams have improved tremendously just based on improving their mental strength and game knowledge. I have literally seen my teams beat teams that were significantly more athletic and talented because they were mentally prepared and ready to execute with consistant results. We accomplished this through classroom sessions where we were able to teach mental skills, and game strategies. These classes are not feasible using our old model. Our Factory Basketball Training Facility has a classroom complete with whiteboard and TV that will allow us to review game video, watch educational videos and conduct classroom sessions.
Injury Prevention
I have seen far too many young athletes suffer injuries and miss large portions of seasons, or even entire seasons. They have been forced to have surgeries and undergo months of physical therapy. The costs of MRI's, surgeries and physical therapy can be in the thousands. But the bigger cost is the missed season, and oftentimes the missed exposure oportunities that go with it. The parents pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for a season, only to have their child sit on the bench and cheer while they recover. And as painful as it is to waste that time and money, the far bigger cost is the opportunity lost. I have seen far too many potential college athletes miss a season of exposure in their critical Sophomore or Junior years, and as a result find themselves with no offers while less talented healthy players have multilpe options. Another terrible truth is that colleges tend to lose interest in players once they are injured. I have seen it first hand as schools who were talking about scholarships one day, stopped answering the phone after that athlete is injured. 2017's Miss Basketball in the state of Michigan spoke during her acceptance speech about how almost all of the Division 1 colleges who had been recruiting her stopped after she tore her ACL, and how she chose WMU because they never stopped.
Girls are up to 9 times more likely than boys to suffer ACL injuries while playing basketball. That is an outrageous statistic. We know why it happens, and we know how to greatly reduce the odds of it happening. Studies have shown that the injury prevention exercise programs like what we are offering decrease the odds of a non-contact related ACL injury by up to 75%. Our old model did not allow us to offer these classes because of the training equipment that is required. We also know that left to themselves, most youth athletes will NOT perform the necessay exercises on their own. We tried supplying some items to our 2018 Orange team, and almost no one did the exercises on their own. This is why organized classes are so important, and why a dedicated facility is necessary. By having a dedicated Training Center fully stocked with all of the training equipment necessary, and by having scheduled classes, our young athletes can learn and complete a training program that they can take with them for the remainder of their basketball careers. The Factory Training Facility will also offer a place for our athletes to go train on their off days if they desire..
Schedule Control
Our old operating model of renting available gym space from local schools also placed us at the mercy of the school's schedule and availability. Making it difficult for us to have adequate practice time, schedule offseason work, or tryouts. By opening our own Factory Training Center facility, we can turn our variable cost of gym rental into a fixed cost, which means that each additional hour that we have gym usage does not cost us any additional money. The flip side is of course that we need to have enough usage to cover the fixed costs, but the huge upside is that we can practice during months that gym rental costs are at a premium without paying those premium fees, and we will control our own schedule, which will allow us to change our practice model.
We do not just want to be a good basketball program. We want to be a leader in the state. When we say lead, we are not measuring it in terms of wins and losses, though we expect to have our fair share. We mean to be the leading basketball program in Michigan based on what we are able to offer our athletes in terms of development, and preparing them for a successful and healthy future.
We hope that you will support the programs and services that will be offered so that we can continue to positively impact the lives of young athletes for years to come.
