Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

All of us from World Class Sports (Damon, Nate, and Rob) want to wish all of our players, coaches, and families a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New year.
Get ready for the second half of the winter season. It's going to be fun!

Walking away with some BLING!

I thought I'd just update everyone on the results from our Kansas City tournament. Well, it wasn't as bad as I had initially thought. We did play a 5th grade team in the championship game. This team had beaten each of the other 5th grde teams in their pool by 20 or more points, so I was thinking that it could be quite the learning experience for us. It was that to say the least. After playing with this team for the first 20 minutes of the game, we were actually ahead by 2 at half time. We were playing really, really well. Coming out from half time however, we got into a shooting funk and couldn't get anything to fall. We also started to lose a little of our composure as they picked up the pressure on us. With both of these building against us, the opponent, the Pumas, were able to take back the lead and add to it,enough so that we had a hard time chipping away at it, although we tried our best. We ended up losing the game by 11, but the game was far closer than that. Regardless of the outcome, playing against 5th graders, that were much much taller, than us; we held our own. I am so proud of how our boys played and I like to see that they don't give up.
We did however, end up winning a silver medal and receiving a nice looking plaque for taking 2nd place. It's nice to see that we can play with some of the teams from the bigger cities and still be competitive. Christmas break is coming up, so our next tournament will be coming up at the beginning of the new year. Until that time, we'll work on some fundamentals so we can prepare for the second half of the season.

We want to wish all players and families a very Merry Christmas and a happy holiday season!!

Kansas City, Kansas City, Here we Come!

Here we are in Kansas City, MO playing in our 3rd tournament of the year. We played our only two games of the day before noon, so we have a little while to just hang out and relax. A lot of parents wanted to finish up some Christmas shopping while some of the players came back to the hotel to swim.

We played very well during our two games this morning. It's great to see how some of the players are starting to pick up on some of the things that we are asking of them. We are doing a great job of looking for teammates up the floor. We do like to run. Sometimes to a fault. We generate a lot of turnovers for ourselves. It'll come together before the year is over with. We won our two games today pretty handily and it's nice to see how we compare with teams in our own age division. Tomorrow however, we will be playing a 5th grade team in the championships so it'll be interesting to see how we are able to handle the challenge.
Now it's off to enjoy the rest of the day. We are all meeting as a team and going somewhere to eat later this evening. I hope the boys are enjoying the experience of not just playing games in a bigger city, but also being able to hang out and get to know each other a little better. We've got a looooong road and a few years ahead of us.

Begin the season with a SWEEP!

What a great way to start our young basketball season. Both the 5th and 4th grade WCS basketball teams placed first in the Abilene Basketball Association tournament this past weekend. The two teams went undefeated through the tournament and beat their opponents rather easily. They had better enjoy the spotlight this week, because both teams will be playing in the National Kickoff Tournament this next weekend and will be seeing some of the best competition in the state and around it. Good luck fellas.

Open gym and conditioning

The new season is almost upon us, and some of us are chomping at the bit to get started. The past few weeks, we have been having open gym dates in which players can come in and get put through a mini workout to get some of the kinks out before the season starts.
This past week, we all worked our tails off doing some conditioning, strength, and agility drills that I got from Coach Finch at Central. Those drills put us through the wringer, man were we tired. Running through ladders, jumping hurdles, stretching muscles we didn't know we had...
Since football is beginning to wind down, the teams will start to take more shape as open gym nights have been falling on football practice nights as well.
We have some big plans this season, such as all teams going to play in the Slam Jam tournament in Kearney, NE. That should be lots of fun and our teams will be able to be competitive as well.
Keep checking in on us as we progress through the season, hopefully I'll keep a better record this season than I was able to last year.

Hope to see you at the open gyms!

Thanks for the Memories

With the 2006 basketball season coming to an end, it also marks an end to the most successful run from a WCS team in the club's 6 year history. After 8 seasons (summer and winter) we say good-bye to our out going 7th graders. They will all be playing for their middle school teams next year. These boys have set the WCS standard of excellence for many years to come.


This hard working group of young men compiled a record over their WCS years of 172-51. That is an amazing record for any team. This group of boys has been an absolute pleasure to work with. As a group we have gone through many changes and regardless what changes we made, the boys always came out successful. It is with my deepest regards and best wishes that we say good-bye and good luck to this remarkable group of young men.

And to you guys, I hope that regardless of how your middle school/high school teams fair, you will always remember being apart of this special and unique team. You are a part of a special family, one that not only includes those from your team, but those who will follow in the future. You have been a great example and model of hard work to all of our younger players and have set the bar high for future WCS teams. I hope that you will continue to support WCS teams and keep in touch as we will always be interested in your future successes.

I want you to know that I will always be here for any of you if you should ever need any help, suggestions, coaching tips, advice, or a friend to talk to. You have given me probably the best coaching experience I have ever had and knowing all of you has made me a better person. I love you guys and hope that you will always stay in touch and keep us posted as to how you are doing. I will miss you.




All Team Members and Respective Schools:

Scott Crist - Quinter
*Trenton Forrester - Salina South
*Scott Gardner - Salina South
Parker Hambley - McPherson
Cade Hays - Ell-Saline
*Michael Hoffart - Salina Central
*Devon James - Salina South
Demetrius Jones - Junction City
Blaine Newton - Concordia
*Cody Neuburger - Salina South
Luke Petrocci - Newton
*Jack Pyle - McPherson
Taylor Redding - Newton
Justin Roush - Quinter
*Christian Ulsaker - McPherson
Matt Weaver - Hesston
*Andy Wiechman - Salina South
*Shay Wooten - Salina Central
Jordan Wyatt - Southeast of Saline

*Denotes players who played in winter of 2005

Again Good Luck. You will always be a part of our WCS family!

Basketball Camps and other stuff

Summer is here and basketball is well under way. This is the first summer in 11 years that I have not coached over the summer. It's hard to believe it has been that long. Even though I'm not coaching a team over the summer, I still have the chance to coach at the Heart of America Basketball Camps. And boy what a week of work that is.
During camp last week, it was great to see about 10 WCS players attend. They all worked hard and each person got better at at least one different aspect of the game of basketball. In some cases, it was learning to become a better teammate.
I like seeing players improve themselves over the summer by keeping up with their skills. I hope to see more at the second session of boys camp in July.
As far as basketball teams are concerned, this weekend is the big MAYB kickoff in Newton. One WCS team will be participating while some former players have started playing for other teams now that they will be playing for the respective schools.
Good luck to all players this summer!