Happy New Year!

Welcome Back! All of us here at Team Esface hope you all had a wonderful Holiday season and are ready to come back for an exciting last few months of TrueLeague! The intensity and pressure are going to turn up a notch here, but I know that it will help each player grow and benefit from the overall experience. A few things I want to reiterate as we head into the rest of this season:

• A big focus on all divisions for this week is having consequences. Players are going to make mistakes in the game and as a coaching staff, we will never be upset when a player misses a shot, turns the ball over, or gets beat in a one-on-one scenario. However, some situations are non-negotiable, like playing hard when you are out on the court, being in the correct position or not utilizing your teammates properly.

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 (TrueLeague) 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!

Parent Hoop Knowledge 101:

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 TT2024TL30. 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!

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 TrueLeague. There’s an option to get in contact with an HQ member in the link as well. We look forward to hearing from you!