Hall of Fame Classic in Springfield, MASS: American Heritage 82 , Central Catholic (MA) 77

We are up in Springfield, Massachusetts for the Hoop Hall of Fame Classic that takes place up here each year. We were fortunate to be invited to one of the top talent gatherings in the country, and we played our game this afternoon against the State Champion from Massachusetts, Central Catholic High School. We came out so hot and opened up an early lead, and never looked back. The final score was the closest the game was all day, and I am very, very pleased with the performance of our squad. Kenny Boynton led our team today in points with 28, and also grabbed 7 rebounds. He is very, very good and showed it again today. Our point guard, Raymond Taylor played well today and finished with 21 points and 7 assists. He was able to use his blazing speed to create easy looks for our team. Marcus Blake played really, really well today and led our team in rebounding with 8. Everton Chin was terrific off the bench for us today, and brought us great energy.
Last night was a great experience for our team as we were able to practice on center court for about 90 minutes. In addition to practicing in the middle of the BASKETBALL HALL OF FAME, we received a visit from a number of college coaches, including both coaches of the game in town here tonight, UMASS and Temple.
Our players have enjoyed the cold weather - the temperature here has peaked at 10 degrees, and we woke up this morning to a warm - 9 degrees - (MINUS 9 is very, very cold!).
LINK TO TOURNAMENT:
LINK TO OUR PICTURES:
LINK TO HALL OF FAME:

1 Day Clinic a Huge Success!

We just completed the first One Day Clinic for the youth in the community at American Heritage School. The day went off as a big success, with more than 60 students in grades K-8 attending from 9:00am - 2:00pm. We came up with this idea as a way for our varsity players and coaches to give a basketball clinic for a short amount of time. I give so much credit to our players - every single one of them were there and working - they handled themselves well and made the day fun for the campers. We also had a great amount of volunteer coaches from both our school and Douglas High School. We have plenty of pictures from the day, and we will do another clinic over the Spring Break vacation (April 6 - 10, 2009). Click here to see the pictures, and click here for more information on the Spring Break Camp!

American Heritage loses in the finals of the Great Florida Shootout

We have just wrapped up our 2 week Christmas tournament schedule, as we returned home yesterday from the Great Florida Shootout, which was held in Orlando. We have spent the previous 5 nights together - playing really good basketball, eating well, building chemistry, and we had a chance to win a national tournament. For the 1st three rounds of the tournament we were matched up against teams from different states. We beat Central Catholic (one of the top teams in Pennsylvania) in the first round, and played better in the 2nd round as we beat previously unbeaten Shelby Valley out of Kentucky. In the semi-finals we again played an undefeated team - Dr Phillips from Orlando. We were really good that night, and moved on to the finals behind Kenny Boynton's explosive scoring night (he had 49) and great team defense. In the finals we played Country Day out of Metairie Park in Louisiana (right outside of New Orleans). As a team they were 78-4 over the last 2+ years, and have added a 6-6 lefthanded junior to the team who has multiple division 1 scholarship offers. In addition, this team (Country Day) has a player that has signed to play for LSU in the SEC (Ludwig), whom we held to 13 points. However, this new 6-6 left handed player (Derenbecker), was in the zone all night long. He finished with 51 points (out of the teams 76) against our defense. We played good defense, but yet he hit 9 of 11 shots from behind the arc, and 17 of 22 overall. He was good great if your will - and that coupled with our team shooting a dismal 33%, we were not able to overcome the deficit and finished as the tournament runner-up.
Overall a good week for American Heritage, and, honestly, a great 2 week session that showed that we can beat anybody when we play our brand of basketball. I enjoyed the journey - but now we shift our focus to the calendar year 2009.
We now will focus our attention to another unique opportunity for the American Heritage Basketball team - our 1 day clinic that we are hosting this Saturday, January 3rd from 9am - 2pm for students in grades K - 8. I can't wait to see our players work with the young kids in the area!
I wish you all the best for the coming year.