Zeke L.

I have 6 years of coaching experience ranging from being a head coach at the 5th grade level up to the 8th grade level. I have also been an assistant coach at the JV and Varsity level of Division I high schools and spent 2 years as an undergraduate assistant at Long Beach State under Dan Monson. I have experience coaching guards, wings, and bigs. While at Long Beach State I also had the opportunity to heavily influence the player workouts and was sometimes tasked with creating and implementing full workouts for players. I prefer to work with players ages 10 and up but it is necessary for each player I work with to have a passion for the game of basketball. I am certified as a personal trainer through NASM and am also CPR and AED certified through the American Red Cross.

My own personal achievements are limited. My body has held me back but my mind has allowed me to coach. I have had multiple knee surgeries and a shoulder surgery that all caused me to miss opportunities to play this game which I love. Because of the limited exposure I had in High School I only had one offer to play basketball at the college level and because it was a D III school in Salem Oregon that could not offer me a scholarship I decided to pursue coaching. I practiced with Reedley City College before suffering my second knee surgery. While at Long Beach State participating in summer drills I partially tore my labrum in my left shoulder which effectively ended my dreams of playing basketball. Now I focus on teaching the game of basketball to young men who have the same dreams I once had.

I believe in progression and building things from the feet up. Just as in any sport having a strong base is what allows for balance, strength, power, and finesse to take place. Stretching is something I will cover on the first day and then it will be expected that you do that on your own time before the session. I do not like to charge for things that a player can and should do on their own. The session will be used for skill development. I typically ask each individual player what facet of their game they wish to improve and that will be where we start. After working with a player for a month or so I like to go out and watch him play a pick up basketball game (as a benchmark) and see if there are other aspects of his game that could use improvement. Every team I've played on or coached has had one player who is a specialist for shooting and defending so those are things that I stress. With guards I focus on ball handling, with wings we focus on dribbling with a purpose and scoring moves, and with bigs we focus on scoring moves from the elbow, short corner, and block.