Black Club Newsletter 1/11/2024

Happy New year!

It was great seeing all of our Black Club teams and athletes back at practice this week! We had a busy break with Christmas Camp, New Year’s Camp, Evaluations, Open Gyms, and our Menlo College Takeover during the last two weeks and appreciate everyone who was looking to get in the gym. It was our first time hosting open gyms for our Black Club during the holiday break and they were a huge success, even exceeding our own expectations with attendance. We were encouraged to see all of our athletes hungry for extra work during the break and it will definitely be something we look to continue (and possibly grow) moving forward!

Menlo College Takeover

Menlo College hosted a Team Esface Takeover on December 30th as our 3rd and 4th Grade Black Club teams took the court to play at halftime. Our youngsters put on a show and were there to watch Menlo pull off a 66-59 win over UC Merced. Menlo is now 13-2 on the season and Coach Cam wanted to send a huge thank you to all the families who came out to support! Don’t miss Menlo’s next home game on January 20th at 7:30pm when they play William Jessup!

Alumni Spotlight: Jai Deshpande

For this week’s alumni spotlight we wanted to take a look at 2020 Sacred Heart Prep graduate Jai Deshpande. Jai played in our ReaLeague back during his high school career and trained with Esface throughout his four years at Sacred Heart Prep. He was named an All-WBAL First Team selection as a senior and signed to play Division III basketball at Whitman College.

Now a senior at Whitman, Jai scored a career-high 35 points against Lewis & Clark this past weekend and is currently the leading scorer in the Northwest Conference, averaging 19.2 points per game. He’s doing all this while shooting 56.7% from the field, 46.0% from three, and 91.1% from the free throw line. With years of hard work, Jai improved his scoring averages each season at Whitman from 9.1 as a freshman, to 10.1 as a sophomore, and 11.5 as a junior. It’s been great to see his success continue into his senior season!

Basketball 101: Increase Parent’s Hoop Understanding

This week we wanted to take a look at Kobe Bryant’s thoughts and philosophy on the importance of working on your game outside of practice. As he mentions in the video above, most athletes are practicing an hour and a half twice a week (similar to our Black Club). To truly separate yourself, you have to outwork your peers and opponents with hours of work on your own, as this builds not only skill but confidence when it’s time to perform on gameday.

While we do our best to incorporate skill development into our practices, we also understand the hours required outside of practice to build a competitive athlete. Our goal for 2024 is to see more of our Black Club athletes training which is why we created a 30% off offer for all our Black Club athletes to use in this month’s transformation program using the code TT2024BLCK30. In these one-hour training sessions, athletes will exclusively focus on specific skills (shooting, finishing, etc.) in an individual or small group setting. You can fill out the transformation interest form below and we’ll do our best to accommodate times that work best for your busy schedule. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions!

Coming Up…

We’re jumping right back into the tournament scene this weekend at the 4BallersOnly MLK Showcase and Bay Area Roaddawgs Net Masters tournament. Be sure to check TeamSnap for your schedule and please mark your availability on TeamSnap so we know our roster for the weekend. Let’s kick off 2024 on a high note!

We crave to learn and grow. The best way for us to grow is with your valued feedback. Please use the above link anytime to let us know how things are going (positives and negatives) for the Black Club. There’s an option to get in contact with an HQ member in the link as well. We look forward to hearing from you!