Elite Basketball Academy Launch Video

The New Elite Basketball Academy starts in January 2020

January Opening of the New Elite Basketball Academy. The first session is on January 8, 2020. To find out more go to:

https://canadianeliteacademy.corsizio.com/

The Youth Elite Academy

The Youth Elite Academy will be offering sessions in January.  This academy is designed for the beginner volleyball players to grade 4-7.  These athlete ages are not written in stone and if you are younger or older than these grades and think you would benefit from the sessions feel free to register.  The youth academy will be a great way for interested athletes to get started in volleyball.   Sessions are only one hour long.  Plan to register early as there are a limited number of spaces in each session.

Basketball Elite Academy

The Basketball Elite Academy will be offering sessions for the first time in January,  We are excited to welcome the coaches who have showed interested in being involved in offering sessions.  There has been a lot of pre-launch interest in this academy and we will be excited to grow it into an academy like the volleyball academy.  The levels in the Basketball Elite Academy will be the same as the Volleyball academy.

Volleyball Academy

The Volleyball Academy will continue to offer sessions as it has in the past three years.  We will be offering sessions in three different levels as shown below

• Basic sessions are designed for Grade 8-9 athletes who are new to the sport with no club or high school sports experience.  These sessions are also of value for more experienced athletes to fine-tune to basic skills
• Medium-High School Junior team members and/or one year of club experience.  This type of session is for everyone.
• Advanced sessions are designed for High school team members and/or two years of club experience.  This type of session would be too advanced for beginner players.

New Academy Gym

The new gym we will be using from January until June.  It is the Ecole Canadienne Francaise on 2320 Louise Avenue (Right across from Market Mall),  This is a two-court gym with wooden floors.  To enter you have to use the west entry as shown in the image below.

Three Elite Academy will be offered in 2020

2020 Canadian Elite Academy has three different academies

• We will continue to offer the Elite Volleyball Academy sessions
• We will start to offer the Elite Basketball Academy sessions
• We will start to offer the Elite Youth Academy Volleyball sessions.

Sessions are posted from January - June.
Register early as the sessions fill.  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Snow Volleyball

Our snow volleyball tournament is delayed as I still cannot find a Mikasa Snow Volleyball we can use.  If anyone has any leads on anyone who might know where I can get a snow volleyball, help me out.

Academy colors and logos

Basketball Elite Academy, Volleyball Elite Academy, and Youth Elite Academy will all have sessions scheduled from December to June.

Delay

The lack of a gym might result in a little bit of a delay in the announcement of the next batch of sessions.  Be patient they will be up soon and I will drop a note letting everyone know when they are available for registration.  Do not wait to register as in the last cycle most of the sessions sold out.

Gym needed

In other news, the academy is working to secure another location to rent other than school gyms.  The academy was informed that it is not allowed to rent the school gyms as it is a corporation and not a non-profit organization.  If you know of anyone who has a two-court gym or warehouse who would be interested in helping a sports academy supply skill training as cheap as possible to the youth of Saskatoon tell them to give me a call.

Christmas is right around the corner.

Christmas is right around the corner. This week we have a Pickup GamePlay on Monday, December 16 from 8-10 pm and Tuesday, December 17 from 8-10 pm. Sign up and come on out and play. On Tuesday from 7-8 pm there is a private lesson available.  The last session is on Wednesday, December 18, 6-10 pm we have “Everything in 4 Hours”.  There are a few spots left in this session.  Then we are off to the new year. Register now

Shooting Technique Basketball

If you want to be a superb shooter, you MUST HAVE a very good basketball shooting form and technique. However, you don't need a "perfect" shooting form.

In other words, your shooting form will never be 100%, and you don't want to be robotic.

With that said, you'll never be a great shooter unless you have "satisfactory" form and mechanics.
It's very common for players to have fatal flaws in their approach, and frankly, they have no chance of becoming consistent shooters.

https://www.breakthroughbasketball.com/fundamentals/shooting-technique.html

Basketball Elite Academy

The start of the Basketball Elite Academy is rapidly approaching.  On December 15, I will book the necessary gyms.  I am currently developing the necessary icons and session descriptions.  Sessions will occur from 7-9 pm at the Evergreen Schools and other available P3 Schools.  The private sessions are normally one hour long and will occur from 9-10 on the same day as other sessions are happening.  I am building the list of interested coaches....so far I have four coaches who said they would be willing to do sessions. They are Brad Schoenfeld, Donna-Marie Frassetto, JJ Del Castillo and Scott Hundseth.  If any of you know others that would be interested please send me their email addresses as you will want approximately 10-15 different coaches on the list to make sure we can cover all the sessions.  Our ratio is one coach to ever ten athletes.  The system is set up to promote this ratio, electronically athletes register and when a session is full, athletes join the waiting list, if the waiting list gets big we hire another coach and then we double the number of participants.  Head coaches for a session are paid 50 dollars an hour while the assistant coaches get paid 40 dollars an hour.  A coach is paid 60 dollars an hour for private sessions.

All athletes are required to bring their own ball as the academy does not supply any balls.  To be selected for a session, each coach is required to complete the coaches contract and form information found at the following URL:

https://sites.google.com/view/elitesite/coaches-contract-agreement

The sessions are:

1. Advanced Defense

2. Advanced Dribble

3. Advanced Offense

4. Advanced Shooting

5. A week of skills

6. Basic Dribble

7. Basic Shooting

8. Defense

 9. Layups

10. Offense

11. Pickup Game Play

12. Private Sessions

Ideas for other sessions are always encouraged and welcome. 

The sessions are for athletes grades 7-12, girls and boys together.  They are individual skill instruction where the athletes can work at their own level.  Our goal is to make them better at individual skills.  Girls and Boys come to the same session.  Sessions cost 30 dollars per participant and no membership fee is require or a minimum number of sessions the athletes come and go allowing for multisport athletes with busy lives.  Coach's children can attend for free the sessions they are coaching.    

A very serious rule at the Academy is:

We do not use the academy to build teams or recruit players for teams during academy sessions.

The reason being coaches will stop sending their players to the academy if they do not believe it is a safe place with no recruiting.

Coaches at the academy are chosen for their maturity and report with the age of athletes we are training.  We are looking for the best coaches in the city.  We do not offer coaching positions to young players (university players) with a history of coaching experience, we seek teachers who have coached as they have skills for working with this age group of athletes.  Coaching certification levels are welcome but more emphasis is placed on older, mature, experienced coaches rather than higher-level coaches with limited experience with beginners and young athletes.  We do bring in guest coaches, (University coaches, professional players etc.) on occasions.  No formal evaluation of coaches is done, new coaches are used as an assistant coach and their continuing involvement in coaching sessions will be based on the athlete's evaluation and the head coach's thoughts on their skills.  Each session offered at the academy is evaluated by the athletes. 

Each of the interested coaches who have completed the coaching forms will receive an invite to a nationwide police check which is a requirement for all coaches. 

What is Happening before Christmas

The schools with their Christmas Concerts have eliminated some of the times that were booked, sorry for the confusion this has caused.  But the good news is I have acquired some extra gym times which has allowed me to offer some requested private lesson times and one new session called Everything in 4 hours.  In short, we now have in the next two weeks:

• (New) A Private lesson on December 11 from 6-7 pm (two spots) Each spot can have up to four athletes attend.
• (New) A Private lesson on December 11 from 9-10 pm (two spots)
• Final Pickup Games before Christmas on December 13 from 8-10 pm
• A Christmas 4's Tourney on December 16 and 17 from 7-10 pm
• (New) Everything in 4 hours on December 18 from 6-10 pm (Includes an Academy T-Shirt)
• Rest for Christmas and come back ready to play some more volleyball and basketball

Merry Christmas and Thank You

I wanted to take a moment and recognize all the participants from the last four months of the Academy.  It has been the busiest time in the academy but from my point of view a time which was awesome because of the great attitude of the players who session after session presented on the court an attitude and approach which will make them better in the skills but even more important athletes who any coach would be proud and excited to have them on their team.  I am honored, proud and humbled by the growth and development of the Elite coaches, players, and guardians of the participants in the  Academy, for this reason, I felt it was important to say Merry Christmas and Thank you from myself as the Head Coach.  I look forward to the January, March and February cycle of sessions and if they are received even half as well as the last cycle it will be a good start to 2020.  Have a great Christmas Break and Volley on.

Used volleyballs for sale

For sale: Tachikara X6 used volleyballs at an incredible price of 37 dollars.  Buy one on the link below and pick it up at any of the academy sessions.  They will make good Christmas presents as everyone who attends a session needs to bring a volleyball.  Also, for sale at the link below is a collection of different T-Shirts that leftover from the Summer Camps.

CEA Store

The Christmas 4's tourney

The 4’s tourney is a mixed tournament, you are allowed one male on each team but it is not mandatory. It can be an all-girls team. The net height will be between the High School senior girls and senior boys’ height. The draw will be designed as a round-robin or pools or double knockout format depending on the number of registered teams. The Sylvia Fedoruk gym. St Nicholas gym and the commons area court will all be used at this tourney. We could have as many as five courts for this session. Family teams are welcome, all-girls teams, teams with one boy and three girls. If we have enough teams to run different tiers based on age we will do so but if we do not have enough teams we will run everyone against everyone. Being the first time this type of tournament has been run, we are still working on the design. I think it would be fun to include a Christmas treat eating event at the end of the tournament and maybe even a volleyball gift exchange. But we can set all that up at the beginning of the tournament.

Pickup Game Play Friday 13th

The last pickup game of 2019 will be on Friday 13th at 8:00-9:00.  I have book two gyms so we can have three courts if we need it.  So, sign up early as in the last two Fridays we have had 24 plus participants.  If you have never come to one of the Friday night pickup games, you are missing out on one of the best sessions offered by the academy.

Setters and Hitter session December 5 2019

The setter and hitter session is a special session because it is two participants for the one price.  You cannot register for it by yourself.  If you are a setter you need to bring a hitter from your team and if you are a hitter bring your setter.  The session is set up the two participants the chance to build some chemistry.  A setter/hitter relationship takes time to build and this session will help. 

New 2020 Icon set

The new 2020 Icon sets

The icon set for January, February and March sessions will be as shown above.  Some new features are the colors, blue for volleyball and green for basketball.  Also at the end of each icon is a difficulty scale.  It tells you what level the session will be in the Volleyball Elite Academy and the Basketball Elite Academy.