ORIGINALLY WRITTEN JOE KLEINSASSER
Succeeding in athletics is a full-time job. The sooner athletes specialize in a sport, the better chance they have to succeed in high school and college.
Mid America Youth Basketball is the organization in Kansas that’s become the 800-pound gorilla in terms of providing athletes an opportunity to play hoops all summer long.
In the 13 years of its existence, there’s no doubt that MAYB has helped athletes become better basketball players in Kansas and area states. It’s a great opportunity for athletes from small towns to play athletes from larger cities.
Some benefits of MAYB are obvious-athletes get playing time and an opportunity to be seen by college coaches while playing basketball with friends.
When visiting MAYB’s Web site, I read that MAYB has become one of the largest organizations of its type in the United States. No kidding. In 2001 MAYB administered tournaments throughout the central states region, and more than 3,000 teams from throughout the United States participated.
Divisions are offered for fourth- through 12th-grade boys’ and girls’ teams.
The stated goal is practice and participation. Thanks to a running clock, each game runs about an hour.
MAYB offers a five-game guarantee at each tournament, which means at least a 20-game summer season in just four weekends. Tournaments are played on weekends in May, June, July and August. Some gyms are air-conditioned, but many are not and the sweat runs as freely as Niagara Falls.
The cost of playing in four tournaments is $990. That translates to a reasonable $99 registration fee for a player on a 10-player team. Of course, additional costs for gas, lodging and food are considerable if you travel very far.
For example, a team from Texas flew to Wichita in June to play in a weekend tournament in Hillsboro. Somehow, I doubt the kids paid their own way. Parents or sponsors probably bore the brunt of the cost.
Motels, restaurants, gas stations and convenience stores reap some economic benefits when their city hosts an MAYB tournament.
Despite all this upside, not everyone believes summer basketball is golden.
A number of years ago, one high school coach told me that while he was glad the kids were shooting hoops in summer, he spent the first part of the basketball season correcting bad habits picked up during summer ball.
The quality of coaching for summer basketball varies as much as the Kansas weather.
A highly successful women’s Kansas community college basketball coach expressed concern that because so many games are played in summer, some athletes may begin accepting losses too easily.
A former high school coach told me that with parents often coaching the summer teams, problems can develop for the high school coach during the basketball season when those parent/coaches second-guess why their son or daughter isn’t getting as much playing time as with the summer team.
For officials, MAYB gives them a chance to work on their game. The bad news is that too many officials work too many games to be physically or mentally sharp by the end of the day.
Playing summer basketball takes a considerable cost and time commitment. It has been called a necessary evil by parents who believe summer basketball is necessary for a son or daughter to have a chance to play high school or college basketball.
Is it excessive? Probably, but America indulges in excess. How else do you explain why we biggie-size our orders of beverages and fries?
Producers turn out reality TV shows at an unreal rate. ESPN has multiple channels with sports programming 24 hours a day.
I’m sure that playing summer basketball would have helped me to become a better basketball player. But that wasn’t an option in the 1960s.
Instead, my friends and I played baseball, went swimming, played games and mowed lawns.
Funny, as much as I like basketball, I wouldn’t trade those days for all of the summer basketball in the world.
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