PREP Athletics Basketball Podcast
PREP Athletics Basketball Podcast
2024 Prep School Basketball State of the Union
In our annual State of the Union episode of the PREP Athletics Podcast, we take you through our extensive tour of prestigious prep schools across the country, sharing exclusive insights and emerging trends in the prep school basketball landscape. During our journey, which started at IMG Academy in Florida and stretched through New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, we uncovered fascinating developments in program expansions, coaching changes, and the evolving NIL landscape. We're particularly excited to share observations about the growing emphasis on girls' programs, innovative NIL proposals, and the changing dynamics of prep school recruitment. Our travels included meaningful visits to historic institutions and conversations with influential coaches who are reshaping the future of prep school athletics
📌 Key Topics and Highlights
✅ Our fifth visit to IMG Academy revealed their significant expansion into girls' programs, marking a growing trend we're seeing across multiple institutions
✅ Former Bryant head coach Jared Grasso is leading an aggressive program rebuild at Knox School, situated just 200 yards from the beach in Long Island
✅ The Masters School, Manhattan's closest prep school at just 15 miles away, offers unique opportunities under Coach Joey Kuhl, former Pitino assistant at Iona
✅ Kiski's transition to co-education and appointment of new coach Joe O'Shea from St Anselm marks significant institutional changes
✅ We're tracking fascinating NIL developments, including an innovative proposal for live-action player tipping through QR codes during games
✅ The rise of high school players securing agents for NIL deals is becoming more prevalent, with some top-tier players now looking at six-figure opportunities
✅ Our visit to West Virginia University provided unique insights into creative engagement strategies, including their successful elementary school outreach program
🔗 Connect with Cory:
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Email | coryheitz@gmail.com
Phone | 859-317-1166
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Cory Heitz (00:23)
Welcome to this week's episode of the prep athletics podcast. it's our state of the union, right? We do this about every year and we kind of go over, the latest that I found out in the prep school world based on my travels and just try to update you on what I've seen, certain prep schools, trends, and, some thoughts. So I hope you guys had a good Thanksgiving. I actually ended, or did my Thanksgiving in Kentucky, back in my hometown and then flew down to Florida to see some relatives there. And I pretty much started off my.
prep school week by visiting IMG Academy. And this is my fifth time being there. I've got two kids there right now, one post-grad, one younger, a younger player. I got to check in with my buddy, Coach Alex Pope, see him again, and then meet with the staff there and just, you know, find out what's going on. So they're really making a push right now for girls. Okay. So if you're a female interested in IMG, if you want to look at the IMG camps or the boys reach out to me.
I'd be more than happy to chat with you about that option. It's a great place. They had a big time international tennis tournament going on when I was down there and it's just, it's a buzzy place because it's, you know, one of the nicest places you can train for basketball or a lot of other sports that I know of. From there, I flew up to Long Island, New York and got to stop into the Knox School and see Coach Jared Grasso. Now, Coach Grasso used to be the head coach at Bryant. After departing there, he's taken over the head job here.
And the cool thing about the Knox School is they are very aggressive on wanting to turn their basketball program around quickly. Okay. They're also located about 200 yards from the beach. They're in Long Beach or Long Island and you're getting a great coaching in Coach Grasso. He's not a stressed being at the D1 level. He's ready to turn this into a very significant program. So really enjoyed seeing that. From there went over to the master's school.
And it's in Dobbs Ferry, New York. It's the closest prep school to Manhattan. So it's about 15 miles away and it's a beautiful school. Coach Joey Cool is the head coach there. used to work for Patino at Iona. used to coach at my alma mater of Air Force. So good seeing Joey there, seeing his facilities and what they've got going on. Fun fact, the Michael Jackson video, Bad, the long version, like the 18 minute movie version was filmed there.
If you go to my social media, you can see one of the staircases that Michael Jackson was on. But yeah, the master school featured in bad by Michael Jackson. From there went down to Episcopal Academy outside of Philadelphia. Now this is not a prep school. Was there to see the Pennington School in action and meet Chandler, the head coach there. Only got to see about 10 seconds of it, but Jay Wright was there in the last 10 seconds because his son coaches at Episcopal Academy. And I didn't know about Episcopal.
before, but it felt like driving onto a bonafide New England prep school campus. It was beautiful. All they needed there was dorms and found out that parents try to get their kids in there in kindergarten. And that's a very competitive process for that. So their kids can be there all the way through 12th grade, which sounds pretty intense, but I guess that's the market in the Philadelphia suburbs. Also Fox catcher, the movie Fox catcher was Steve Carell, Mark Ruffalo and Chandler Tatum.
about the Dupont family and their wrestling compound. The Pisco Academy was built on what used to be Foxcatcher Farms. So interesting piece of trivia there. And that night had dinner with Seth Berger, head coach at Westtown. Seth is doing great things there. They're a really good team. And I got to catch up with him about the zeitgeist of NIL transfers, et cetera, et cetera, because he's got two sons playing D1 right now too. And we kind of went through the ins and outs of that.
The next morning woke up, went to the Phelps school, beautiful gym in the Philadelphia suburbs. Coach Trey Moore has been there. Trey and I have hosted zoom roundtables with prep school coaches and had never met Trey before in person. So good to finally meet him. I got a kid there from Taiwan and Australia this year. So I got to see them and see how they were doing. And from there we drove about an hour away to Perky Omen, Coach Harry Moore, who was on the podcast a few episodes ago, got to see him in person.
And I got to meet the head of school admission office and just, they're going to do big things there as well. They're trying to be very aggressive to build up their program and do, you know, do what they can to make it a national powerhouse. Previous coach, coach Tom Bowden though did that. They're going to continue this. they went over to Kiske, one of my schools I've had a long-term relationship with, met their new coach in person, coach Joe O'Shea, who's in his first year after coming from St Anselm D2 school in New England and, Joe's dad.
was the head coach at Bryant and Joe was the point guard there. So Joe, former D1 guard, former D2 assistant, and he's now taking over the helm at Kiske. Got to meet with them. They started a girls program, or I'm sorry, they started bringing girls to school. So it used to be an all boys school, now they're coed. I think they've got about 25 girls there this year and they're looking at starting a girls program there. So once I know the coach, we'll start including them in our repertoire and seeing what they have to say.
And then from Kiske, we drove up to Western Reserve, got to see them play. One of my players, Thomas Hunt Jr. 6'6 from Dallas, Texas, there's a post grad up there, got to see him. As well as three girls I've placed there this year. Leah Cordon from Davis, California. Sheridan Overhand from Connecticut. And then Ginger Ng from Singapore. So got to see them and then go out to dinner with Coach Thomas Adams-Wall and Matt Garvey. Both of them have been on the podcast, boys and girls coach there.
and got to chat with them and learn some things behind the scenes there. And then we had, we're going to visit four more places to include Andrews Osborne on the following day. But then that lake effect snow came in around Cleveland and just dumped. we paused on that and I was on this trip the whole time with my dad, Big Mike Heights and good spending time with him. But we went down to West Virginia university from Cleveland and we got to see the women play. We got to see the boys play.
I should say men, but about the women's game was at 10 30 in the morning. And the reason for that was that they had a 5,000 elementary school kids come there. And some people told us they wouldn't go near there because of all the screaming. And let me tell you what, I loved it. There was energy in there. When they showed kids on the big screen, they went nuts. The music they played at timeouts were from Bluey.
And Konto, the minions and the kids were going nuts. And when they'd show kids on the big screen, you could see the blue mouth because they were just sugared up with Slurpees and cotton candy or whatever else that the concession stand was selling. And I loved it because it was a blowout. They blew out East Tennessee State. But, you know, that's something I don't know if most colleges do it or not, but if you can bring in 5,000 elementary school kids, give them a good deal on tickets the rest of season, they're going to love the game, love being out of school. And I thought it was fantastic.
One thing I learned from a buddy, this is about NILs, right? There's a proposal, and I don't know where this is going, but I thought it was fascinating, to put QR codes on a screen for certain players, right? Or all the players in the court. And if they do something good, or they win and you like that, you can scan the QR code and tip them, right? So think about Caitlin Clark last year, all the attention she got. If she had a QR code and made like a NBA 3 with someone in her face, someone could have gave her a live action tip.
And I don't know much about Twitch. think you can tip on watching people play video games. This could be the future for sports, right? So very interesting thing. I don't know if it'll ever be legal or happen, but just something I wanted to share with you that I thought was thinking outside the box. other schools I went to demand for girls was very high, right? So that's something to think about there. agents, high school players are getting agents to help them do deals to college. Now mind you, this is the higher end players, right?
that need to negotiate with NIL and whatnot and these agents are gonna know Better than most people like what the range is for you can that you can get out of school Who's paying what for what kind of player they can negotiate in your behalf and be the bad guy? So something to think about if you're a hiring player is looking for an agent back to West Virginia So after that game where we saw the girls play in the morning We met the men's coach who's new there from Stephen F Austin coach Kellogg and then we met coach DeVries who's in his first year there from Drake
Both great guys, both excited to get their program going. And that night we watched West Virginia beat Georgetown and the first big crowd there this season. And Coach DeVries got to see kind of how the West Virginia fan base is. And when that place gets going, it gets rocking. And the cool place about being back in the Coliseum is I was a ball boy there as a kid. I played there in All-Star games at halftime. I went to camps there with my dad. My dad scored the second bucket there ever at the Coliseum. So...
He got to show me around Morgantown, show me where my mom lived in college, where my uncle lived, where he lived, some of his old stomping grounds, and just really special to spend time with him. One fun fact I learned from my dad is my dad, he was in high school, had the most unbelievable high school roster. I'm tell you why. He was in a small farming community about 20 miles away from Fort Wayne, New York. And here's where kids on his team went, right? They had a seven footer go to Purdue. My dad's brother was 6'11", went to Oklahoma.
My dad was seven foot went to West Virginia. They had a guard go to Navy. Another guard go to Boston bowling green and another guard went to Florida. That's like an Oak Hill roster. And this was in a small farming community. And I asked him, was like, how did you ever lose a game? And he said, well, back in the day you could stall cause there was no shot clock and a team would get a lead and just hold it. And, you know, not the best way to win a game, but people did that. And then I said, what was your dream college to go to?
And he said, UCLA to play for John Wooden. And I just found this out after being with him for my entire life. John Wooden came to his high school gym in Garrett, Indiana to watch him practice and said at the end of it, you're too slow for UCLA Mike, but I wish you the best of luck. And I said, John Wooden came all the way from LA to your small gym in Garrett, Indiana. goes, yeah. I said, were you nervous? He goes, no, just, you know, just played. So anyway, the, the wizard of Westwood,
saw my dad and turned him down. In the old story, just thought that some scout told Wooden that he was slow enough. I didn't know they met. So yeah, my dad got recruited by John Wooden, Adolf Rupp. Some heavy hitters there, which I've told the Adolf Rupp story before. I'm not going to tell it again, but it's a great one that just blows my mind. There's also a Patino story in there as well on how my dad's pissed off a couple of UK Hall of Famers. So that'll be for another show. Last thing here.
Right? So I've got a client right now who's a really good player in their state. They've got D1 offers. there's six, seven, and they're going to post-grad year at a prep school to try to bump up a level or two, right? Maybe mid-major or high major. Thinking about this now, that player could now add six figures to his pocket, right? The going rate for good players out of high school is getting into, you know, a hundred thousand, 500,000 to some of the better players that can get into the millions.
So this is something that's new, but that family, their investment might pay off in pure money in their pocket, not through scholarship. They're going to get that already, but through NIO money. So something interesting to think about there. If you're a higher end player, something to think about if you want to look at a post-grad year to improve your chances of potentially getting a better offer from college. So anyway, that's the state of the union right now. Got a busy holidays coming up. I will be leaving the country and not as busy.
with replies or social media personally, but we'll keep things rolling and I hope you guys have a safe and happy holidays and look any questions about the prep school world, please reach out to me. We'll get back to you and try to answer them. You got plenty of time. I know there are a lot of prep schools have a January 15th or January 30th deadline. There are also schools with enrolling admissions. There are schools that are need-based schools that are merit-based, all this stuff we can help you with. So if you're interested in prep schools, please feel free to reach out to us.
If we're delayed in getting back to you, it's because I'm going to be out of pocket for a little bit celebrating my 10 year anniversary with my wife and taking our kids out of school to see a little bit of the world. But just know that we're here if you can be a little patient to help you find the right fitting prep school. So if you like this, you're probably subscribed already, but if not subscribe to the podcast on all the major podcasting platforms, sure to subscribe on YouTube. We've got bonus content and yeah, go to prepathletics.com.
and join the newsletter service there. Once a month we'll update it. And that's where all the latest information is on the Prep School world and our signings and our, you know, kind of stuff we're putting out there in the world. We're updating the blog more and more now with good pertinent articles. So check that out Thanks so much for tuning in. We'll see you next week.