This is Buying Sandlot — the only newsletter that focuses solely on the business of youth sports.
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In the email today:
🇺🇸 SPIRE Academy To Host Patriot Games
The picture is starting to come into focus.
The Patriot Games will be held at Spire’s campus in Geneva, Ohio, on August 9-11.
President Trump is expected to be in attendance, according to The New York Post.
Freedom 250 — the organization running the event — also revealed some details about what to expect:
The competition will include rounds that test excellence in skillsets of beloved American sports, including elements from football, basketball, soccer, track, and more. Competitions will feature both team and individual competitions. Competitors will be tested on the skills from the Presidential Fitness Test, go through a military-inspired boot camp circuit, and finalists will compete in an obstacle course designed to test strategy and skill.
ESPN is scheduled to stream events on its app; there will be a primetime special on ABC on August 13.
Trump previously said each state and territory would be represented by a male and female athlete; Freedom 250 has also indicated tribal nations will be represented.
Participants will be chosen by a selection committee. It’s unclear who is on the committee; the selection criteria that Freedom 250 has provided is also vague.
Considering every Patriot Games announcement seems to change or omit a handful of details from the previous announcement … I do not get the impression this is a well-oiled machine.
But while expectations for the event should probably be low, that does not mean Spire cannot be a winner.
The boarding school has generated a good amount of buzz in recent months:
Hiring Kevin Boyle as boys basketball coach
A lucrative partnership with Vensure Employer Solutions
A NASCAR race sponsorship
Arrival of Indochino founder and CEO Drew Green as chairman
This could be its biggest coup yet. Spire will get to showcase its facilities for a national audience and it figures to earn a slew of media mentions.
IMG Academy has a decades-long head start in business and brand recognition, but Spire is undoubtedly beginning to emerge as a nationally-revelant elite sports school and a big player in the industry.
🏀 Youth Basketball Is Not Youth Soccer
Some have tried to throw hoops into the ongoing U.S. youth soccer debate, suggesting the rest of the world has caught up to America and could soon overtake it.
A coach who has been around the world has a simple message: Stop romanticizing.
“America is by far the best basketball-playing country and the best basketball-developing country in the world,” Basketball Immersion founder and former college coach Chris Oliver told Buying Sandlot.
“It’s not even close. There’s no comparison. Anyone that has gone to other countries knows this from a facilities, resources and organization standpoint. The access to competition, the competition model. There are issues and there are things we can do better. But by and large, there is nobody doing it better than America.”
Oliver’s games-based program — used in over 50 countries — will be featured at US Sports Camps’ Snow Valley Basketball School, which kicks off its 65th year this week at Westmont College in California.
Basketball Immersion is built on game-based learning, conceptual offense and real-time decision-making. Oliver said the bulk of his session at the camp will be 4-on-4 play with a constraint-led approach, like players being unable to use their right hand in order to work on their left. The goal is to move practices beyond “lines, laps and lectures,” he said.
“Players play a sport, and they learn the sport by playing the sport,” said Oliver, who has worked with coaches on Nike’s EYBL circuit and been an NBA consultant. “I saw people weren’t really doing this, and I didn’t understand why. The research supported it, even at the time, that this is one of the better ways to learn. … Play basketball to get better at basketball, and don’t deconstruct the game as much as we have.”
Another interesting take from Oliver: Basketball teaching techniques have not adapted enough to account for the lack of free play and pickup opportunities for kids nowadays.
Kids also no longer watch full college and professional games the way they used to decades ago. But, Oliver argues, approaches like Basketball Immersion can effectively replicate a playground court or sandlot in a modern setting.
“We’re creating a safe space for [young athletes] to be able to explore within principles of play,” Oliver said. “You get to play and figure things out.”
🏋 ETS Performance Contines To Expand
ETS said it now has over 80 locations nationwide after opening 16 in Q1.
The youth sports-focused training chain acquired Kula Sports Performance earlier this year. ETS also said it will begin rolling out a nutritional support program across its network later this year.
🤠 Facilities Arms Race: Metroplex Mega Project
Mansfield, Texas, is building a $2.5B mixed-use development that leans heavily on youth sports.
Two major venues are already up and running inside the Dallas suburb’s Staybolt Street Entertainment District:
Mansfield Stadium: 7K seats, home of MLS Next’s North Texas SC, was Czechia’s World Cup camp
Field at Station 63: Diamond-focused complex operated by Kemper Sports; hosts Perfect Game events
Also planned: A 45K-square-foot entertainment hub, over 700 single-family homes, hotels, retail and more.
🤦♂️ Parents Behaving Badly
A Pennsylvania man has pleaded guilty to felony charges after police said he stole about $60K in donations to a youth baseball league.
A fake youth baseball league, to be more specific.
From The Erie Times-News:
Police said a number of things led them to believe the baseball league did not exist. They included baseball practices posted on the organization's Facebook page that were always canceled hours or minutes before the scheduled practice time; fields where practices were scheduled that were overgrown and appearing unused; and the lack of necessary permits from the City of Erie to use city ball fields, investigators wrote in the complaint's affidavit of probable cause.
The man scammed businesses and individuals, according to cops; victims were told donations were going toward ads, uniforms and more.
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Good game.