Hustle Up Vol. 10 rocks the peninsula

We had a blast hosting our annual Hustle Up tournament and celebrated the event’s 10th anniversary just a couple weekends ago! Overall we hosted 52 teams across 14 divisions for our one-day event at Sequoia High School and Menlo College. Esface had a great showing overall, taking home seven championships on the day. Congratulations to the 4th Grade Goers, 5th Grade Goers, 6th Grade Goers, 7th Grade Hitters, 8th Grade Goers, 8th Grade Hitters, and even our 2nd/3rd Grade TrueLeague Select squad who filled in just hours before the event and left with hardware!

We appreciate all of the families and volunteers who were vital to making this event a success once again. Thank you to all of our Team Esface family and excited to have everyone back next year!

Summer Squad Interest Form

After a successful first season, we're excited to announce the return of our Black Club Summer Squads! These teams will run from July 8th-August 25th to keep our Black Club athletes active and ready for the Fall season. This seven-week program will consist of one practice per week (Monday or Tuesday) at the Arrillaga Family Gym, four local one-day tournaments, and two local two-day tournaments. Last year featured three teams with merged grades (2nd/3rd, 4th/5th, 6th/7th) and will be a great opportunity for Black Club athletes around for the summer looking to develop their game for the following Black Club year or upcoming high school season. Please let us know if you'd have interest below!

Remaining Tournaments Update

We wanted to keep everyone updated on our remaining tournament schedule as we’ve made some adjustments to give us added prep before the Coca-Cola Nationals. We’ve added the Soldiers South Bay Invitational on June 1st and 2nd which will take place at South Bay and Peninsula gyms. All of our Black Club teams will participate and we’re excited to add another tournament to our schedule to give our athletes extra competition. The following weekend will also have all of our teams in action, although the 4th Grade Goers, 6th Grade Goers, 6th Grade Hitters, and 8th Grade Goers will be at the G365 Gold Rush event on June 8-9 while the rest of our Black Club teams will be at a one-day Bay Area Roaddawgs event on June 8th. This will help us stay ready for our trip to Southern California after taking Memorial Day weekend off. Hope we can take advantage of the extra games to prep!

March Madness Winner: Matteis O’Brien

Our Team Esface March Madness pool concluded last month with Matteis O’Brien from 6th Grade being crowned the champion! Matteis successfully predicted the national championship matchup with UConn beating Purdue in the final and finished among the top 99.2% of ALL ESPN brackets. He was rewarded with $100 worth of Esface gear for his victory, congratulations to Matteis!

College Prep making Noise

The College Prep season has been off to a blazing start with both our 17U and 16U teams making their debut on the Adidas Gold circuit. Both teams have been making serious noise across the West Coast!

Our 17U team opened the season 17-0 and has had three athletes commit to play college basketball next season. Most recently, the team participated in their first Adidas Gold event where the 17U team went 4-0, including wins over out of area programs from Washington, Oregon, and Colorado. Serra sophomore Wyatt Von Blanco was named to the All-3SGB team for his performance at the event. Seniors Fedrick Pernell (Sacred Heart Cathedral) has committed to play at San Francisco State, Andrew McDowell (Serra) has committed to play at Denison University in Ohio, and Nick Corbett (Bellarmine) has committed to play at Skyline College. We have a number of other athletes receiving interest from college coaches and will be making their decisions soon.

Our 16U team went 2-2 in their first Adidas Gold event after winning the G365 Fog City event a weekend prior. It was a blessing to see BOTH our 17U and 16U teams celebrate tournament championships at the G365 Fog City where the teams combined for a 9-0 record (pictured above). Serra sophomore Clausen Schmidt was named MVP of the event and was recently named to the All-3SGB tournament team for his play last weekend.

We're looking forward to the upcoming NCAA Evaluation Periods in May and July where our athletes will play in front of numerous college coaches. They still have two Adidas events remaining where we look to cement ourselves among the elite on the Adidas Gold 3SGB circuit. They take off for Anaheim next weekend for the first NCAA Live Period and look to qualify for the Adidas Select 3SSB event in South Carolina later this summer!

Black Club Vitamins: New and Improved!

For those who were at Black Club Vitamins last week, you might have noticed a new and improved format! We’ve added a third coach and expanded our capacity to 18 athletes to serve more athletes than ever before. We’ve also utilized our third coach to take advantage of the turf area to work on plyometrics to improve our quickness and speed. With a 6:1 athlete to coach ratio, we look to further utilize our court time while also improving our athleticism in the process! We’ll also be hosting our open gym as always immediately afterwards which is FREE to all athletes who participate in vitamins or $15 for anyone just looking to join open gym. Be sure to sign up in advance as the last three weeks have sold out!

Register for AAU Elite Camp

As the school year comes to a close, we wanted to make sure all of our Black Club athletes are looking towards our top-rated Team Esface AAU Elite camp this summer! With six weeks available, all of our Black Club athletes automatically qualify for our AAU Elite camp that takes place at the Arrillaga Family Gym (600 Alma Street, Menlo Park). Our first week starts on June 18th and we’re currently offering a Buy One, Get One Camp 15% off using the code HCFAMONLYMAY15. You can find more information and register in the link below, feel free to reach out if you have any questions and we hope to see you there!

Alumni Spotlight: James Beckwith

For this week's alumni spotlight, we wanted to highlight College of New Jersey senior James Beckwith! James grew up in the Team Esface program starting in fourth grade and became one of the top players in our Black Club program. He even set the Team Esface record as an eighth grader for making eight three-pointers in a championship game!

James went on to play at Menlo-Atherton High School where he led the Bears to a PAL championship and was named to the All-PAL First Team for his efforts. After graduating in 2019, James signed to play at Emerson College in Boston where he shot a NEWMAC-high 47% from three-point range as a freshman. He averaged 9.0 points per game over three years and made 114 three-pointers as the Lions qualified for the 2022 NCAA Division III National Tournament.

Prior to his senior season, James transferred to the College of New Jersey where he’ll be graduating next month. In his final collegiate season, James scored 9.8 points per game and led the Lions to a NJAC Championship and Division III National Tournament appearance. He scored 17 points in the NJAC championship game including a 5-for-6 showing from three. He'll be graduating with a business analytics degree in May and we're excited to see his next chapter! He's also a regular in our coaches game at camp so be sure to catch him at Team Esface camp this summer!

Basketball 101: Increase Parent’s Hoop Understanding

For this week’s Basketball 101 segment, we wanted to learn from back-to-back NCAA Champion Dan Hurley! Hurley is the head coach at UConn and was recently interviewed by CBS to learn more about his success since taking over the program.

When asked about what the coaching staff looks for in the recruiting process, Hurley starts with the obvious measurables with the “height, speed, and skill set.” He then goes on a separate tangent to add that, “We spend a lot of time really focusing on the parents.”

This snippet shows all the work college coaches go into to truly understand the players they’re recruiting and everyone around them during the recruiting process. He adds all types of different red flags that can arise and is a reminder that the parents are being evaluated just as much as the athletes. We always believe that an athlete’s inner circle determines their ceiling, whether it’s their parents, friends, coaches, or anyone else they spend their time with. It’s why we try to surround our athletes with coaches and mentors who know what it takes to achieve success whether it’s on or off the court. As Hurley finishes, “If you’ve got the wrong type of people in that inner circle around your players, they’ll sink your program.”

Coming Up…

We’re at the one-day Peninsula Takeover this weekend as we’ve partnered with Bay City and the Atherton Bulldogs to host the event. Be sure to check TeamSnap for your schedule and please mark your availability on TeamSnap so we know our roster for the weekend. We hope everyone takes their Sunday to celebrate Mother’s Day and show appreciation to all the mothers out there!

Next weekend we’ll be playing at the Bulldawgs Peninsula Invitational May 18-19 before taking the next weekend off for both games and practices to celebrate Memorial Day. We’ll be back in action for the two weekends prior to Coca-Cola as mentioned above and look to finish the Spring/Summer season strong!

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!