Our Mission

 

Our mission is to provide a fun and fair playing environment for all players.   

We teach sportsmanship under all conditions and encourage all participants to complete what they start.

We promote player development over the need to win at all costs.

 

 

 

About Us

 

Freedom Area Basketball has provided a fair and competitive basketball league for 30 years.  We average almost 1300 players each season, inclusive of grades K-12.  What allows us to be both popular and successful with this longevity is our commitment to providing a fair and balanced approach for ALL players.

 

We are a Recreation First league.  This means that while we do support several select teams who compete against higher competition, our first focus is on the larger volume that plays recreationally.  We are not a ‘win at all costs’ program.  We believe in developing all players skills and confidence rather than showcasing the few that might be ahead of the others.

 

To be successful in this, we don’t follow the traditional practices of most recreational leagues.

 

• We do not accept carpool requests at any level.
• We do not accept requests for specific coaches at any level.
• Head coaches are not permitted to select assistant coaches.
• Teams are newly formed each season, either through manual placement (grades K-2), or through an evaluation process (grades 3-12).  They are not carried over year to year.
• Coaches do not select their own players.  They are involved as a group in forming teams equally based on metrics, without knowing what team they will get.  This forces them to be fair when creating.
• Division Leaders do not have a child nor a team in the division they lead.
• We employ a specific set of playing time rules that requires equal time for all players participating in each game.

 

Each of these factors, when used incorrectly, poses the risk of creating ‘stacked’ or ‘biased’ teams.  We have all seen one of these below scenarios play out in some sport at some time in our lives. 

 

• Coaches only want to coach the same 10 kids across all sports.
• Parents only want 1 specific coach (see previous bullet point)
• Coaches only want to coach the best kids in the group. 
• Some draft process is used based on a previous season’s results, not taking into consideration any new coaches or players, or players that have moved on. 
• Division leaders taking liberties to stack things in their favor.
• Head coaches needing 3 assistant coaches, all of whom have the 3 best kids in the league.

 

Youth sports are so driven by the need to win, that the interest of the players is set aside.  More often, it is the coaches and parents driving the ‘must-win’ agenda. 

 

We make every effort to avoid the perception and risk of unfair or biased practices.  The results are not always perfect.  You don’t normally see a division where every team has a .500 winning percentage.  Sometimes the evaluations and ratings did not work out as designed.  Sometimes player attendance is a factor.  There are many reasons why what looks good on paper doesn’t come to fruition when forming balanced teams.  But the point is that the effort is made to give each player and team the chance to succeed each game.  We remove the obstacles to fair competition.

 

Not everyone believes in our mission or our goals, and that’s OK.  We know we can’t please everyone.  There are other leagues available throughout the county for folks who view recreational sports through a different pair of glasses. We always encourage folks to seek out the groups that best align with their beliefs.

 

Our enrollment stays strong, the interest is high, the positive feedback is frequent. 

 

We gotta be doing something right.