TODD WOLFSON -ST. FRANCIS (CA) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – AAU POSITIVES, NEGATIVES, & POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS – EPISODE 947

Website – https://www.sfhs.net/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=392005&type=d

Email – coachwolfson@gmail.com

Twitter/X – @CoachWolfson

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Todd Wolfson is the Boys’ Basketball Head Coach at St. Francis High School in California.  In this episode, Mike, Jason, and Todd discuss the positives, negatives and potential solutions to improve AAU Basketball for the betterment of the game.

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Get ready to take some notes as you listen to this special AAU episode with Todd Wolfson from St. Francis High School in the state of California.

What We Discuss with Todd Wolfson

• AAU Positives
  • Gives players who love the game more opportunities to play
  • Allows young coaches to get more coaching reps and opportunities
  • More opportunities more female players
• “Sometimes you can’t get that high school job because you don’t have that experience. But giving yourself a nice AAU resume sometimes helps younger coaches.”
• Solution – Let AAU be governed by USA Basketball (modeled after USA Soccer)
  • Player Cards to track info on all players
  • Regulations to start and operate an AAU Program
  • Coaching Certifications
  • Limited window for players to change teams
• Solution – All tournaments based on age not grade
• Solution – Teams/Leagues/Tournaments are leveled so players of all abilities have a place to play
• “Does anyone have an open gym anymore?”
• Parents fear of missing out
• “More is not always better. I think that’s kind of lost in the AAU world.”
• Solution – A simple plan to try to get kids in the community to play and compete against each other. Opening up the high school gym and organizing local games for a small fee.
• When it comes to choosing an AAU Team – “If you’re concerned about a championship, you’re concerned about winning a ring, you’re concerned about how many points we win and lose by, this program is not for you.”
• The important role that high school coaches can and should play in the college recruitment of their players
• Advice for parents when choosing an AAU or High School Program – Find people that are good role models that are going to look out for your kid.
• Solution – Pay officials more to get better officials and keep the players safe
• “There’s so much money being made you have to give the officials a little bit.”
• Solution – Play more 3 on 3

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THANKS, TODD WOLFSON

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TRANSCRIPT FOR TODD WOLFSON -ST. FRANCIS (CA) HIGH SCHOOL BOYS’ BASKETBALL HEAD COACH – AAU POSITIVES, NEGATIVES, & POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS – EPISODE 947

[00:00:00] Mike Klinzing: Hello and welcome to the Hoop Heads Podcast. It’s Mike Klinzing here with my co-host Jason Sunkle, and we are pleased to welcome back to the Hoop Heads Pod Todd Wolfson, head boys basketball coach at St. Francis High School in California. Todd, welcome back.

[00:00:19] Todd Wolfson: I appreciate you guys having me. I love what you guys do and honored to be back.

[00:00:24] Mike Klinzing: We are thrilled to have you on and we’re going to kind of take a different approach tonight and talk some AAU basketball. And anybody who is involved in. the basketball world is touched, impacted in some way by this monster that we call AAU basketball. And what we’re going to try to do tonight is talk about some of the positives of AAU basketball, some of the negatives that we see in AAU basketball.

And most importantly, maybe try to provide some solutions, ideas, thoughts about ways that we can improve the system as a whole. Maybe the way that you as a high school coach, an AAU coach, an AAU organization, a parent, ways that you can maybe improve the experience in your small little world. Maybe we can’t do the sweeping Huge change all at once, but what are some things that maybe individually we can do to make our experiences better?

So Todd, first of all, welcome in and thanks for being willing to jump on and talk some AAU tonight.

[00:01:34] Todd Wolfson: I appreciate you guys having me and definitely a subject that’s near and dear to me with being an integral part of what we do as high school coaches. We, I think back in the day there was a lot of coaches saying I’m not going to ever touch AAU. I have to, can’t be involved and that’s not for me, but you know, now I think coaches realize we have to be affiliated in some capacity, whether it’s just going to support your guys, your high school current players.

[00:01:59] Mike Klinzing: All right. Let’s start by focusing on some positives. Give me one or two things that you like about AAU basketball or what are some of the benefits that you see to AAU basketball?

[00:02:12] Todd Wolfson: I mean, if I had to give you two, two ones that always stick out to me, I think positives is the first one, it gives an avenue for, for guys to play that love the game and want to continue to play and get recruited and you know, all that stuff.

It definitely gives them an avenue. Sure. There’s the negatives that coincide with that. But it gives, does give guys that, shoot, if you want to play, you love the game that much, and it means a lot to you, and it’s probably better than doing some stuff other stuff that kids would do.

Getting yourself in a gym and working out and playing some basketball could be there could be things that are worse for kids to do on the weekends. And I think it gives guys an opportunity to play. I think that’s one of them. And then the second one is I think it helps young coaches especially.

You know, it’s hard. We all know, all coaches have kind of been in that world before and where you’re trying to become a high school coach or you’re trying to become a college coach or whatever the case may be. Go look at that job title and it says need 7 years experience or need 3 or 4 years of coaching experience or whatever the case may be.

And sometimes you can’t get that high school job because you don’t have that experience. But giving yourself a nice AAU resume sometimes helps younger coaches kind of get their foot in the door and help out in the high school world and give them an opportunity

[00:03:36] Mike Klinzing: Absolutely. Let me piggyback on both of those ideas.

I think when you talk about opportunity You’re really what I think it allows kids to do is have another avenue, right? When we’re talking about depending upon where you are in the country high school rules vary all over the country. Some places you can basically coach your kids year round, other places you’re limited in the off season to a certain number of days or a certain period of time where you can be working with your high school coach.

So the opportunity to play AAU basketball, as you said, gives kids multiple opportunities to go out the game, hopefully be exposed to good coaching if they’re in the right program with the right coach. And then I think Maybe even more specific to the girls side of the game, I think when you look at what AAU basketball has done for the girls side in terms of providing more girls and young women the opportunity to play basketball at a high level, and just get some experience.

If you think back 15, 20, 25 years ago, if you were a female player, the opportunity to play basketball in the off season was pretty limited. It’s hard to find a pickup game with all girls. Basically, you’re looking at only the really, really good female players were able to go and play with guys and that kind of thing.

And so I think the opportunity that’s provided for young women to me is one of the huge pluses of AAU basketball. It’s not as I don’t think as pronounced on the boys side because boys could in the past find pickup games and find places to play, but I do think on the girls side that’s a huge piece of it.

And then to talk a little bit about the coach side of it, I think in addition to Getting something on your resume, I do think that the opportunity to get reps coaching games is something that I don’t really take for granted when I get an opportunity and I’ve coached my kids in AAU basketball and just to have the opportunity to sit and be the head coach and make decisions and know when to call time out and change defenses or change offenses or make adjustments, all those things that regardless of what level you’re coaching at or you want to coach at, I think the more reps that you can get as a head coach making those decisions, the better off you’re going to be as you continue to advance on in your career. So I think those are two really positive things that AAU basketball does. And look, when we start talking about what AAU basketball has become versus kind of where it started, I think back to, I’m 54 years old and I think back to when I first started playing AAU basketball, probably at age, I don’t know, 13, 14, 15, somewhere in there.

And I was the general manager and my dad was the coach and here in Cleveland, Ohio, there was maybe two teams of guys and it was basically the best kids from. all across the city. You’re talking maybe 25 kids all together that played AAU basketball and now you look at the way it’s exploded and again provided opportunities but also has morphed into something completely Different than I think what it was originally intended to be.

And I know that one of the things that I’ve heard you say and seeing you talk about is the fact that AAU has kind of become what an old, what the rec leagues used to be like, but with a super high price tag. So let’s attack the rec league part of it and just getting back to sort of what the original intent maybe was with AAU in terms of providing an opportunity for some of the really good players and then also not excluding the players who want to play the game in a different way, maybe not at the same level of intensity and how do we provide opportunities for those kids? So let’s attack the high end of AAU first. How do you envision that? I know you talked about getting things to be, if you want to put together an AAU club, that there should be some rules and regulations and requirements that are put in place.

Let’s talk a little bit about that idea.

[00:07:47] Todd Wolfson: Yeah. So, I mean, Right out of college, my roommate was a coach, a soccer coach and he coached a pretty substantial club soccer program that’s now LAFC’s, kind of, their feeder program it’s kind of morphed into that. And just hearing some of the stuff that they have to do on the side.

I think that’s somewhat of the model. I think that works. I think that’s a great way to do it. They regulate how many teams can participate in the state of California and the state of Ohio. You can’t just start your own team. You have to go through a strenuous process. To create your own team each kid, each athlete has a player card.

They have to register with the USA organization and they get a player card with a number that travels with them. The coach has to hold onto the player card or wherever they go. It counts how many days they’re on their feet, it counts how many hours they’re on their feet. Coaches have to log that.

There’s a transfer window, so there’s no jumping around from I mean, this is like nine years old. You can’t transfer from team to team during certain time periods. There’s stats on every kid. There’s coaches certifications. So, in order to coach, you can’t just show up. You’ve got to get fingerprinted first, like, you know being a teacher would, where that’s not a process that happens at the AAU basketball level.

You’ve got to get fingerprinted. You’ve got to get background checks. You’ve got to take classes and the classes are not easy. You need to get a certain type of license to be able to coach and you have to renew that license every couple of years.

[00:09:35] Jason Sunkle: So you’re saying it sounds very organized, Todd. Todd, you sound like it’s, it seems organized compared to what we see.

[00:09:39] Todd Wolfson: Extremely organized.

[00:09:41] Jason Sunkle: And you can’t just show up in Crocs and a t shirt and coach a game maybe. It’s unbelievable.

[00:09:48] Todd Wolfson: Yeah, it’s unbelievable. And kind of how they do it. The meticulous way in which they kind of have every facet of the game. It’s pretty cool to see. And it’s done the right way.

And I think they did that because We’ve been so far behind in the USA soccer. We’ve been so far behind in soccer that they said, we’ve got to find a way to catch up and we’re not going to catch up to these other countries because we don’t have these quote unquote academies and schools that kids are going to where they play soccer at seven and eight years old.

So how can we clean this game up and make it so we can try to be as successful as we can, and this is kind of the model they came up with. And it’s awesome. It is really, really fun. And it works.

[00:10:32] Mike Klinzing: When you think then that USA Basketball is the organization that’s in the best position to be able to

[00:10:42] Todd Wolfson: Yeah I mean, I think they’re the ones that have the most skin in the game, the most money. And when you look at Olympic sport money that happens during the Olympics that’s astronomical. And what some people put into making sure our athletes are doing. Our country competes with other countries and et cetera, and I think they’re the ones of the conglomerate that would be able to do it kind of piggyback off the way USA Soccer does, does their model.

It seems to be that way, and there’s rogue soccer clubs that don’t play in the organization that all the best players play in, but as soon as one of those kids gets. To a point where they’re good. One of those better teams kind of snatches them up and those fade real, real fast. It’s kind of what I’ve heard.

So I know a lot of people will go, Oh, people just start their own league. Yeah, they could. But again, it’s like, why would you not want to be in the best league? And they have enough teams to sufficiently get the majority of good soccer players in the area, a look at it and a team to play on.

[00:11:45] Mike Klinzing: So when we think about that particular model and we kind of break down. why it would work and how it would help to regulate what we see in AAU. And I think when I, when I heard this and when I saw you tweeting about it and you start thinking about that card that travels with kids and keeps track of where they are, what they’re doing and allows both the organization, whether that’s USA basketball to monitor them, but it also allows them to kind of keep track for themselves of, Hey, here’s what we’re doing.

And it seems like a situation where if we have all that information and we could all tie that all to that player ID, we’d eliminate a lot of the goofy problems that you see where you have a kid, okay, this kid’s playing on this team and this tournament, and then all of a sudden they’re showing up on another team in the same tournament, which I know I had that happen with my older daughter one game, we’re playing, and we’re winning a game at halftime and all of a sudden four players show up in the gym at halftime and they come in and the team ended up beating us. And then in the same tournament the next day, We’re playing a game and midway through the first half, one of the girls that we played against on another team the day before shows up and tries to check into the game and I’m like hold on here.

This girl played on a different team in the same tournament. And that’s obviously kind of an extreme example, but I know that, and I’m sure you’ve seen it, Todd, that you have players that every weekend you show up and they’re on. a different team. And when you start talking about what’s good and what’s healthy for kids, that’s obviously not the situation that anybody wants to get into.

[00:13:48] Todd Wolfson: 100%. And also, the other caveat is the age thing, you know they, they do their tournaments by age, not by grades. There’s not a seventh grade division in the sixth grade division. There’s a, 13 U division and a 12 U division and kids have to turn in their birth certificates to get their cards so you know exactly how old everybody is and you can’t play somebody up you know you can’t play you know there’s just it just makes it makes it fair it makes it easy you know they keep track of red cards and how many times the kids get thrown out of the game and if you get a certain amount you’re banned for a year you can’t play soccer in the United States I mean it’s organized and I think that’s something that needs to happen.

The problem is with basketball is it’s an indoor sport where you can. Easily regulated mission prices where soccer is a little bit more difficult, I think with giant fields and to harder to regulate that. So I think the money side of basketball is preventing this.

[00:14:52] Mike Klinzing: So how do we go about bridging that gap between you have all these individual actors, meaning AU organizations, tournament organizations, you have coaches that just put together a team here, a team there. What in your mind, how, how do we bring this under One umbrella. And then obviously kind of what we’re talking about is players that are at a higher level.

What do we do in your mind with then once we get beyond that top, whatever percent we’re talking about, let’s say 20 percent or 10%, whatever the percentage is, then what do we do with the kids who are below that threshold, who still want to play, who we still want to give a great experience to? Does the system then just flow out from there where those kids are still under the same system, but just at a different tier?

Is that kind of how you would envision it?

[00:15:54] Todd Wolfson: Yeah. So there’s developmental, there’s an EYBL and there’s a division below that. And then there’s division below that. There’s a division below that. You know, once you join the club and they’ve got maybe from their 14 youth, they’ve got eight teams and that coach can move guys up and down and you can’t really transfer teams till your window’s done.

But we’ve got eight teams and we find a number of teams that suffices for, for basketball. And again soccer’s kind of figured that out. Soccer’s pretty, pretty popular. Maybe not as popular as basketball. But you know, they’ve kind of spiced that out and figured that out. And then I hate as much as it happens we all get to a point in our life, unless we’re LeBron James or Steph Curry, where you’re just not good enough anymore, and you’ve got to figure something else out.

So I think that’s with everybody, we’ve all been there. So you’re, you’re trying out for a team and they’ve got eight, 13 new teams and you didn’t make any of the eight. Well, maybe it’s time to pick up another sport or go play at LA Fitness like we all did back in the day or go play at the park and maybe we’ll bring back some of that stuff that kind of is lacking a little bit.

[00:17:08] Mike Klinzing: It’s just, I think, speaks to that idea of that AAU basketball has just become a catch all for every single player. And it’s really, I think, in a lot of people’s minds, it’s sort of the only option and it’s really not the only option because you just listed out a few and I can include just playing in your city’s rec league and there’s lots of different ways that you can find to continue to play the game if you love it but I think Parents so often see that they have this delusion about how good their kid is and what they want their kid to be doing.

And they talk to other parents and they see what other parents are doing. They see what other players are doing. And obviously with social media today, you can look up and see what every, 8U kid is doing because somebody’s posting their highlight film or they’re this or they’re that. And it makes it a challenge for parents to be able to navigate that process and figure out, hey, what’s the best way for my kid to get what they want?

I think it’s hard, right? Because so much of what happens in youth basketball is driven maybe not so much by what the kid wants, but by what the parent wants. And then to go along with that, what the AAU club or the AAU coach wants, and then they kind of put that pressure on the parents who then conversely put the pressure on the player to participate, even though it may not be exactly what the player wants.

I’ve always said that when I think about, especially talking about like the lower age groups, when you’re talking about seven, eight, nine, 10 year olds, there’s very few, at least in my experience as Todd, that there’s very few kids who are nine years old that want to drive an hour to basketball practice three times a week, practice for two hours and then go play six games with an official and a scoreboard in front of mom and dad.

There’s very few kids, I don’t care what the sport is, but obviously in this case basketball, there just are very few kids who want to do that. There are some, but those kids are few and far between. And I think that we kind of push kids into a system that probably isn’t intended for the masses, that probably would be much better.

We’d be much better served where the kids who want that kind of experience have access to it with the system that we described earlier. And there’s an alternative for kids who want to play the game on a more casual level. And clearly we want, we want those kids playing, but it’s just a matter of how can we provide them and their families with an optimal experience.

And I’m not sure that the, the, the 800 hotel weekend and the 100 admission fee for coming in to see games. I’m not sure that’s the best system for an average 10 year old player, if that makes sense.

[00:20:13] Todd Wolfson: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I joked around with a high school coach. The other day, we were talking about does anyone have an open gym anymore?

He said I used to have an open gym, but I know just for kids in the community, come play just come here and play. If you want more games and you want to play, come play. I’ll sit here and call fouls and break up fights if I need to. But you know, he’s like, kid, just stop coming. Hey, coach you know, I got an AAU practice.

Coach, I got this. Coach, I play tomorrow in a tournament. Kid just stopped coming. So he’s like, I stopped doing it. It’s kind of sad that that’s kind of what it’s come to where for those kids that needed some reps and need some games, instead of having to pay all that money, they can just go to a like a local high school.

I’m sure coaches would be all for it That came back. I’d open up my gym all the time and let kids just come run in the community and play and get some reps in and just do it that way.

[00:21:09] Mike Klinzing: The challenge of getting kids to play pickup basketball is one that in a lot of ways I have a hard time wrapping my head around it still because it’s just so different from the way that I grew up in the game. I say all the time that I had an opportunity to play high school basketball, had an opportunity to play division one college basketball. And still some of my best experiences in the game happened on the playground or in a gym playing pickup basketball.

Those are some of the things that I remember probably more than some of the things that I played organized basketball. Last, this was not this past fall, but the fall prior. Before my son’s junior year of high school, we had access to a gym and we probably had, I don’t know, an email list of 25, 30 players that my son had played with or against over the course of time.

And we sent emails out to all those kids saying, Hey, we’ve got a gym on such and such a night. We’re just going to come up, play some pickup basketball, kick in a couple bucks so that everybody can cover the court costs. And we’re just going to play and try to make it a good quality high school basketball pickup game.

And first week we had it, we had maybe nine guys. So we played some three on three. Second week, we were down to six. And by the third week, we had like two people. And then we stopped trying to do it because we just couldn’t get kids to show up for it. And to me, it was just, it was just a sad commentary kind of on where we are in terms of.

And everybody just kind of grows up from the time they’re, again, six, seven, eight years old. And they don’t think it’s real basketball if they’re not playing with an official and with people in the stands and a scoreboard on. And it’s the death of pickup, pickup basketball, I think is a huge part of sort of why AAU has developed into the monster that it’s become.

[00:23:09] Todd Wolfson: Yeah, I agree. I mean, I  was joking with my coaches the other day, we had an eighth grade basketball team. And we kind of let them play a little bit. And we rarely play 5 on 5. Usually what we do is a lot of 3 on 3, playing 5 on 5. About 10 eighth graders in the gym, and I said, check it up check it up.

Kids had no idea what that meant. Like, you guys don’t know what check means? You have no idea. The coach said, I don’t understand, I just hand him the ball back? I’m like, no, you turn it, you check and see, make sure your guys are matched up and ready to go, and you give him the ball back. And I’m just like, man, what has this come to?

And it was a sad, sad day. I shed a tear after that one.

[00:23:47] Mike Klinzing: When you think about pickup basketball and you just think about what you learn from that and being in that environment and sort of the creativity and the looseness and the just ability to experiment or to fit in with the team or to be in a place where There might be six or seven teams waiting and you know, if you lose that you’re going to be sitting for an hour or maybe you just go home because you’re not going to get back out on the court.

And kids that grew up in the AAU culture, they don’t ever get to experience that because if you lose, you just end up going to the loser’s bracket and there’s another game coming regardless of that outcome. And so, I think when we talk about trying to fix the AAU system, what we’re really trying to talk about is how can we provide an optimal experience for the kids who are participating, and whether that’s kids at an elite level that need one thing, or we’re talking about kids that are at some level beneath that, we want to be able to provide them with the best experience in the game that we possibly can and also be able to sort of relieve the pressure that parents feel both financially and in terms of what they think their kid is going to ultimately achieve in the game.

Because you can walk around any AAU tournament and if you go watch 8, 9, 10, 11 year olds play in an AAU tournament and you see and you listen to the conversations with parents on those sidelines, the amount of delusion that is out there in terms of their kids ability to eventually be recruited and play college basketball.

And just the level of seriousness that people ascribe to an eight year old’s AAU basketball game. I mean, it really is crazy. I always say that I’d like to just walk around and now that I’ve had my son who graduated this year and he’s fortunate enough to be able to get an opportunity to go and play Division III basketball next season, Just if I could walk around and give parents one piece of advice, it would just be, Hey, calm down.

It’s going to work out one way or the other. And it’s probably not going to have much to do with you. It’s going to have to do with your kid and what they ultimately decide to do in terms of how they practice the game and how much they love it and how much time they put into it and what you do. as a parent is probably going to have not a whole lot to do with whether or not your kid ends up achieving, whether it’s, hopefully it’s their, hopefully it’s their dream and not yours as the parent.

But I think that parents get so caught up in what’s going to happen next and can my kid, Get an opportunity to whatever go to this high school or go to this college or whatever It might be that I think that parent education piece Todd to me is always a big part of trying to figure this equation out

[00:26:51] Todd Wolfson: Yeah, I’m with you a hundred percent It’s just hard so much bad information out there so much FOMO Johnny’s playing this weekend Oh, he is.

Yeah. Oh, I have to play them too or there’s this theory that we talk about where you’re sleeping, they’re working. So you got to be working. Like, I mean, such a bad model in my opinion as long as you’re getting your work in and you’re doing what you need to be doing, and you have a plan.

I am not a fan of that model. Again, it’s mind blowing to me that kind of misinformation we have. I mean, a good example. I, I currently on my roster, my high school team, I have a five star kid plays for Team USA. And you would never know who his parents were in the gym in terms of how they act, how they respond, and their worries about him in college, and the AAU circuit.

I mean, he played, he played JV as a freshman, and. Never had an issue with that and played on an average club team as a sophomore and never had an issue with that. And they knew he was going to be good. You can kind of see it. You know, they kind of just trusted the process and went with the path and shoot, now he’s got offers to most schools in the country and is headed to Colorado to play for Team USA.

So, I always want to reference the good stories where it kind of comes back to them and kind of what they’ve done and It might be a diamond in the rough, but they’ve kind of handled the process, feel the right way and kind of just let things play out as they be. And they’re always telling me whatever God has a plan for them and whatever happens is going to happen.

And that’s just a great refreshing model. And I wish people would tell more stories about people like that instead of the other side of the coin.

[00:28:43] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think you are 100 percent right, Todd, that there are lots of people out there? I think sometimes we get caught up in these conversations and kind of paint with a broad brush that, man, everybody out there in AAU basketball is crazy.

And certainly there are a lot of people out there that are, but we forget that there’s also a lot of people out there doing it right. And I know that I can speak to my own experience in terms of what I’ve seen work. Yeah. From an AAU basketball perspective, and it kind of goes right along with that story that you just told that.

For most people, when it works out well, and when it works out well, I mean that your kid ends up having a good experience. And by a good experience means they had fun. They were in a situation where they developed. and got better. It doesn’t necessarily mean that that journey ends up with a division one college basketball scholarship, but it does mean that they have a positive experience.

And I think from a parent perspective, what leads to that is somebody who educates themselves about what good AAU basketball looks like in terms of what kind of program am I looking for? What kind of coach am I looking for? What kind of tournaments do we want to play in, depending upon. Do we have goals of playing college basketball?

Well, if you do. Then it’s important that you play in tournaments where there are going to be college coaches there. Because I’ve seen kids that play on teams that the kid was probably good enough to maybe get some looks. Division 3, Division 2 schools, and maybe they’re playing on a team that doesn’t play in some of the tournaments that they should be, or conversely, maybe they’re traveling, maybe they’re a Division III player and instead of playing in their home state or the neighboring states, they’re traveling halfway across the country to play in front of schools that they’re never going to be recruited by because those schools are going to recruit more local kids.

And so I think it’s, as a parent, you have to, I think, A, educate yourself and then B, To your point, you have to kind of let the chips fall where they may, knowing that you’re making good decisions with the best interest of your kid at heart. To me, it always comes down to I don’t care what person you are in this process, whether you’re a coach, a tournament organizer, whether you’re a parent, whether you’re a high school coach, an AAU coach, if you go about the process with the idea of trying to do what’s best for the kid, for the athlete, that more often than not, if you frame your decision and around that, you’re going to end up in a better place than if you’re focused in on yourself.

And I think parents have to sometimes just take a step back and realize that the AAU experience is about the kid. It’s not about me as the parent.

[00:31:42] Todd Wolfson: I agree. And one thing they always say, which I love, is more, more is not always better. I think that’s kind of lost in the AAU world is everyone thinks more, more, more, more, more is not always better.

I mean he’s on a top level AAU program and ranked in the country and he’s not playing this weekend because they don’t want to. And there’s some tournament that everybody’s playing in, but Coach, you know what? I’m taking a break this weekend, man. I got some stuff to work on and I got to rest my body and I want to do some heat and some ice and, man it’s just, it’s you know, I think, again, it’s going back to the education piece.

You got to educate parents a little bit better and, again, that starts with the coaches and, you know going back to the system. I think it all starts, again it can reference the system that kind of we’re stuck in. And I think that has to get fixed first before any of this other stuff can kind of repair itself.

[00:32:38] Mike Klinzing: If we could make that sweeping organizational change at the very top, I think to your point, we would end up eliminating a lot of those smaller issues that we’ve been talking about in terms of what parents should be looking for, what kids should be looking for, because we’d have people who have the knowledge of the game and the understanding of what needs to be done in order to put together a system that would benefit all the kids, all the participants in this new structure of AAU basketball.

I know that you and I talked before the pod a little bit about just the exorbitant cost of AAU basketball when you start factoring in the travel for parents and paying for hotels and gas and getting somewhere. And then you talk about the fees to get into tournaments. And you mentioned to me that one of the things that you’re trying to do with the youth program in your community and just maybe providing an alternative.

Talk a little bit about that because this may be something that if we’ve got high school coaches out there that are listening, this may be something that they want to think about bringing to their community. So tell me a little bit about what you’re trying to do with Getting your gym open and maybe trying to give kids a different kind of opportunity.

[00:34:07] Todd Wolfson: Yeah. So what we’re kind of doing is almost like the park and rec model, I guess, not the right term to use park and rec, because there’s definitely players that aren’t park and rec level players. But any kid can come sign up. Yeah, there is a small fee to kind of sign up and every weekend you get games whether it be three on three, whether it be four on four, sometimes we’ll do five on five.

And it’s games within your community. It’s kids in the area that want to just get some games in and get some, get some coaching in. And it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of, it’s, it’s pretty simple to be honest with you. It’s not a rocket science. The kids are just kind of getting their games in, they want to play games and it’s structured.

And we’ve got officials that are high school officials and not officials that are they’ve done 45 games that weekend. Guys that take their job seriously and there’s no feet at the door to get yourself in there. So if grandma and grandpa on both sides want to come watch and play, free to get them in.

There’s a small money that gets made, but it’s not anything that’s even close to kind of what’s happening in the world today. And it’s just very simple plan just to try to get kids in the community to play and compete against each other. So again, also from a family standpoint, parents aren’t driving all the way eight hours a weekend and staying in hotels and not spending time with their family.

And you know, it’s a couple hours a weekend and they can get home and within 10 minutes and spend their weekend with their family.

[00:35:45] Mike Klinzing: What kind of feedback have you gotten from parents that you’ve talked to? If we think back to the top of the conversation, and you mentioned that fear of missing out, and so a parent is participating in the program, like you just described, and some other parent in the neighborhood is talking about, well, hey, we went to this place, we played against this tournament, and we’re playing against the 19th ranked.

Tent and under team here and there. We all know that those conversations take place. So what kind of feedback have you gotten from parents who are participating?

[00:36:21] Todd Wolfson: I think it’s been you’re going to lose the, I always say the 1 percent is a different deal. Are we getting the best sixth grader in our area to come play all the time with us.

It comes every once in awhile, but. You know, he’s playing in big time tournaments, so I get that. He wants to do that, and his family wants to do that. That’s, again, that’s their decision. We’re going to be here, and we’re going to do it this way. And for the other 99 percent of those kids, they love it.

They absolutely love it, and it’s helping a ton. It’s keeping families close to their house. It’s letting families kind of be together for the other 10 hours of the day instead of spending 40 weekends a year in a hotel room where maybe dad is with the son at a AAU basketball tournament and mom’s with a daughter at another tournament somewhere else and they rarely see each other.

I can keep going on the reasons why AAU was struck it’s not the greatest. This kind of keeps everything Close and local and the top players play against the top players. So if you’re a better kid in the community, you’re not playing against Johnny, who’s picking up a basketball for the third time in his life Johnny will play against another guy who’s doing the same thing.

We kind of just break them up into groups based on their skill level and let them play not too much instruction, a tiny bit, but it’s more about just getting them games close to home and getting them a good experience.

[00:37:47] Mike Klinzing: Feels to me like if you could just get people to get started with that and kind of get over the hump that once you got it going and people saw that there was a viable alternative that more people would jump on board with that particular model of how we do basketball.

Because again, like I said, I know there are kids out there who are 10 years old who want more and more and more basketball. There are those kids that exist, but I think a lot of kids, the reason why they play any sport is to be with their friends and to play the game and to have fun. They’re not trying to do it to turn into NBA players, to turn into scholarship players.

I think that a lot of times is driven by parents. And so it goes back to what I talked about earlier in terms of being able to educate parents about what’s important and how we go about things. And I think that speaks to another challenge that we have in AAU basketball. And it kind of is a contrasting look at how high school basketball operates in the perspective of a high school coach.

There are obviously AAU programs out there that do things the right way and that develop their work on getting not only their teams from an AAU standpoint better, but they’re also working on getting their individual players better. But we also know that there’s a large percentage of AAU programs and coaches that are just putting the balls out and they got different people on their team every week.

And there’s not really that continuity. So from a standpoint of a high school basketball coach, if you’re looking for An AAU program, an AAU team, an AAU coach that you would want your players to be playing for with. What are some of the things that you’re looking for from that coach, from that team, from that program that would make you feel comfortable sending your players into that environment?

[00:39:52] Todd Wolfson: That’s a great question. Great question. I think as weird as this is going to sound, I think the first one is someone that’s not winning championships. I know that sounds weird. Like, why would you want kids that aren’t winning championships, but there’s a really good program in our area that doesn’t win very much, but they play up a level.

They challenge their kids. They always play in the Platinum Division, which is the highest one in the little area we have here. And they’re probably not a Platinum Division team. I think he told me that they’ve won like seven games in the last 40 something. And every year it’s the same thing.

And he does that every single year. And three of his kids. And two of them have gone to Division I scholarships, and one is on his way. So, it’s pretty impressive that kind of that model, again, details his parents straight up. If you’re concerned about a championship, you’re concerned about winning a ring, you’re concerned about how many points we win and lose by, this program is not for you.

My sole goal was to make your kid a better basketball player, to make him understand the game, and to get him ready for high school basketball coach. For And it’s a great program. It’s a great program and he does the right way and been successful for many years, so I think that’s kind of something I would look for.

You know, guys we have probably all gotten these emails at least maybe I’m the only one, but hey, my son Juan’s interested in coming to your school and He’s won 42 championships since he was in third grade, and he scores 14 points a game, and he won this trophy.

I’m not interested in that person. That’s not my style. That’s not a something that most high school coaches aren’t really looking for.

[00:41:43] Mike Klinzing: How have you started to think about the role that you play as a high school coach in the recruiting process when AAU basketball has become so important to college recruiting.

When you think about from the perspective of a college coach, the ability to go somewhere in a weekend and see and evaluate a large number of kids versus going to watch a singular high school game where maybe I’m watching one player, maybe two. If you’re talking about high level high schools, maybe there’s multiple players in a game that a coach would be evaluating, but certainly it’s much easier to see a large percentage of players in a weekend in a big AAU tournament, which has increased the importance of AAU basketball in terms of recruiting.

I think about my own experiences, Todd, as a parent with my son, and basically during his junior season as a high school player, he played maybe 10 minutes a game and didn’t do anything that would in any way, shape or form probably lead you to believe that He would have the ability to play college basketball and during his spring AAU season after his junior year, played on a good team, played well, got an opportunity to be seen by lots of different college coaches and eventually got himself an opportunity to play college basketball at the division three level as a result of that AAU experience.

And to be honest, his high school. play and team had very little to do ultimately with whether or not he got an opportunity to play college basketball. So just what’s your experience been like as a high school coach? How do you see your role? And then how does that play into sort of, I look at that when we talked off the top about one of the benefits of AAU to me.

And again, I’m speaking from a personal level, AAU in terms of getting my son an opportunity to play college basketball. was instrumental in that happening. Whereas his high school basketball experience, although coaches came and saw him play in high school this past year as a senior, most of that interest came as a result of having seen him in the spring playing AAU and then, hey, we want to come see this kid play in high school more to just let him know we’re still interested as opposed to trying to evaluate whether they thought he could play at that level.

Just how do you think about your role in college recruiting as a high school coach?

[00:44:21] Todd Wolfson: You’re vital. Extremely important. You know, to this day I don’t know how many kids I’ve had play college basketball, but I don’t remember a coach who’s offered a guy that I’ve had just from seeing him in AAU and not giving the high school coach a call and said, hey, tell me what kind of kid he is, what kind of person he is.

Send me some high school films, send me a full game. When can I come see you guys play? I’d say it’s extremely, extremely rare that they don’t at least visit the high school, talk to the high school coach, visit a high school game. A good example is UCLA saw my guy this past summer ago.

Liked him a ton, gave me a call. Hey, send me his transcripts. What kind of kid is he? How’s the parents? What’s going on with this? You know, and then we want to come see and play a high school game. Can you send me your schedule? And they were, shoot, they were at seven games this year. And eventually offered a scholarship and, you know so I think it’s an important role and it’s a vital role.

I think both have to coincide with each other. Both have to work with each other to kind of make that work. I have conversations constantly with Hey, what’s going on? Who was there this weekend? Oh, school B was there. Great. You know, they’ve been calling me too and contacting me. So sounds like they’re interested.

Just kind of being in communication and doing whatever we can for our guys to get recruited. So I think both have to go hand in hand. And again, that’s a higher level kind of kid. You know, if you’re a kid who has no offers and. No interest and not a lot going on and playing AAU and still not getting any bites.

You know, that’s what I think the high school coach is almost, I won’t say more important, but extremely, extremely important in the fact of like now it’s time for me to start making some phone calls in schools that I feel he could play at or be honest with him and say, hey, bud I don’t know if this is something for you.  I think that that’s the important role of a high school coach.

[00:46:23] Mike Klinzing: Well, I think that ability to be honest as a high school coach with a player is something that I think AAU coaches and AAU organizations sometimes struggle with, right? Because it’s almost a conflict of interest in that if I tell this kid that, hey, You’re not a division one player.

Maybe you’re a division three player, or, Hey, you’re not a college basketball player. You’re probably going to have to be content with trying to maximize your high school career. Those aren’t things that generate more business for you. They’re not things that leave people happy. even though that may be what those people need to hear, it certainly isn’t what they want to hear.

And we all know that when people don’t hear what they want to hear, oftentimes they go and try to find somebody who will tell them what they want to hear, even though it’s not really helping them. And it’s just continuing that delusion of what may be waiting at the end of a player’s high school career.

So I think you make a great point that you have to be able to have those honest conversations with. players with their families so that they understand exactly where they’re at. And then ultimately, again, to me, you’re trying to put your kid, at least as a parent, from that perspective, like, I want my kid to have the best experience possible. So I want them to have the best high school basketball experience possible. I want them to have the best AAU basketball experience possible. And if they’re fortunate enough to be able to get an opportunity to play college basketball, I want them to be able to have the best college basketball experience possible.

And does that mean that they have to win every championship? Does that mean that they have to be the kid that gets 15 or 20 shots in a game? To me, no. I want the ultimate experience to be one that when that kid looks back at it 20 years down the line, that they say, man, it was awesome to be a part of that high school basketball program.

Or man, I loved my AAU experience. Or man, I went to the right college because it ended up being a place that I fit in academically, socially, and the athletic piece of it and the coach and the relationship and all the things that I built while I was there for four years are all things that are still impacting me 20 years later.

And I think so many people just get caught up in that short term of, Hey, what’s next and what can I get out of this? And I think a lot of people have an unrealistic view of what they’re trying to do. And I think if people step back and look, parents are well meaning and everybody loves their kid and wants what’s best for them.

Unfortunately, sometimes I think we get caught up in what’s right in front of us. And don’t get me wrong, like I’ve been there before and I’ve had things that have happened on teams or decisions that coaches have made that I haven’t necessarily been happy about because of the way it impacted my kid.

But you also have to be able to take that step back and understand that there’s a bigger picture and there’s more important things at play than just what’s right in front of you in the moment. I think that if we can help people to understand that, I think high school coaches play a big role in that because clearly spending the amount of time that you guys do with your players and with your families and getting to know them and to be able to have those kind of honest conversations.

To me, that ability to be honest is such a big part of being a high school coach.

[00:50:00] Todd Wolfson: For sure. I mean, there’s a thing I always go back to I tell parents this at our parent meeting. And,  we have an 8th grade day at our campus where 8th graders can come and talk to coaches with parents and stuff like that.

And I always tell parents the same story. I tell them you know, there’s this, there’s a study done that discusses. The most successful people in the world and research shown that the most successful people in the world are those that have had the most amount of good role models in their lives growing up.

And that is a huge factor in the success of individuals. So. I tell parents a lot of times, you need to do your research before you plan on an AAU team. You need to do your research before you join a high school and decide to decide to have a coach that you’re going to entrust to your kid and do your research and find people that are good role models that are going to look out for your kid.

And then once you’ve made those decisions, stick with them. You know, usually your gut decision is a good one. Obviously, every once in a while you make a bad one, but stick with them. And let those people do their job. Do your research, do your homework and kind of let them do their job. I always reference might not be the best one, but if I was going to have knee surgery, I’m not just going to go, all right, well, whatever doctor shows up and the one I’m good with you know, you’re going to do your research and you’re going to find the best doctor that you feel like you’re going to find one. That’s maybe has good references and has good reviews and is highly touted.

And you know what? I’m going to trust this doctor. And once you decide to trust that doctor, you’re rolling with it. And I think that’s similar to. We’re not doctors, but your kids high school and AAU experiences, find the best people that are going to put your kid and you’re going to be happy with, and just stick with them and trust yourself and trust your research.

[00:51:50] Mike Klinzing: Yeah. Too often you see people jump in from one AAU team to another AAU team and a lot of cases jumping from one high school to another. And now with the transfer portal, you see players jumping from one college to another. I know I saw at some point a tweet that there was a kid in the transfer portal that they listed his previous eight years where he was.

And he had been at four different high schools and was going to be his fourth college since he got to college basketball. And you just think about like how beneficial can those experiences be to that kid and his development as, forget about as a basketball player, but just his development as a human being?

I mean, I think it’s just crazy when you start thinking about just the amount of movement and what were the lessons that were, teaching kids when it comes to those things. Let’s talk about officiating in AAU. How do we, how do we make sure that we’re getting quality officials? What can we do? And I know I told you a story about during one of my daughter’s AAU games that we had two officials They were two young guys and they just kind of stood on opposite foul lines from each other and they can’t really see what’s going on because they’re not running and giving their best effort.

And then as things start to get chippy, you end up with problems and tournament director kind of said, Hey, I don’t really want to be here playing in this game either. But there’s lots of tournaments going on and we’re kind of scraping the bottom of the barrel with these officials. And I just, I think there has to be, it goes back to, I think, what we talked about off the top in terms of sort of reorganizing how this whole thing works.

But when you think about officials, what, what’s, what’s the solution there? I think I have an idea, but I want to hear, I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are.

[00:53:36] Todd Wolfson: I mean, yeah, I mean, you know I would say if I have a game tomorrow whether it be AAU or whether it be five year old basketball or whatever, and I said, I’m paying for it.

10,000 a game. I’m going to get the best darn officials in the world. I might get college level NBA level officials, right? Pay people enough. They’re going to, they’re going to come out of their way to do it. I think you have a ton of high school officials and maybe even lower level college officials that I’m not doing that.

I’m not paying. I’m not working for 20 bucks a game when the gate fee is $45 a person to get in. And. They’re selling a hot dog for, for 20 bucks and a Coke for 15. And I’m not why am I going to sit there and get yelled at from parents and tormented for an hour for, for 20 a game, just not worth my time.

And most of my friends that are high school and college officials, they’re, they’re not wasting their time with, with AAU. So you’re stuck with the guys that are willing to do it. And sometimes not their fault, but. You know, I think it goes back to the organizational model, but then again, the terminal organizers and you want to pay 20, you’re going to get a 20 official and.

Unless you want to pay cash more money, this is how it’s going to be.

[00:54:53] Mike Klinzing: I think it goes to if you talk about going from the top down and you have an organization that is overseeing all this that you have to have officials that are Because I guarantee that some of these tournaments that we show up to, guys who are putting on the striped shirt are not certified officials.

And look, just because you certify an official doesn’t necessarily mean that that official is going to be putting in their best effort on a given day, especially if they’ve done five, six, seven, eight games in a row. You at least set a standard same way like you want to have coaches be certified. Does that mean that every coach is going to be the best coach that has ever been?

No. But it does mean that that coach or in this case that official has a requisite level of knowledge of what should be being done which should raise the overall level of officiating. And I think the big thing that for me when it comes to officiating is not so much worried about what kind of calls that official’s making.

And Hey, some officials are better than others. Just like some coaches are better than others. Some players are better than others. That’s a part of the game. What I start to worry about is when officials aren’t getting up and down the floor and aren’t getting into position. And then you have things going on on the floor that officials don’t see. And before you know it, that’s when you get into situations where things happen, an elbow is thrown, a word is exchanged, something happens that an official doesn’t see, and then multiple somethings happen that officials don’t see. And before you know it, you get in a situation where you have teams fighting, coaches getting angry, and we have these whole situations that blow up because.

Officials aren’t getting into the positions that they need to be in order to see those things and put a stop to it. And that’s, that’s what I worry about is that we’re putting our kids in dangerous positions when we don’t have adults doing what they should be doing.

[00:57:08] Jason Sunkle: Mike, to that point, so I was happening to be somewhere, I will keep it nameless, and I was watching an AAU game this weekend, and there was an official that was on the phone for five minutes while he was officiating.

Yeah, that’s not good. Five minutes. Five minutes. Five minutes straight on the phone while  he was officiating a high school AAU basketball game. Like, what is that?

[00:57:32] Mike Klinzing: It’s crazy.

[00:57:33] Todd Wolfson: It should be illegal. Who’s monitoring them? How much does that guy getting paid?

I’m not saying it’s right, but you pay a guy to take your trash out for five bucks and you pay him a hundred bucks Judy’s going to take that trash out as best it can. You know, and it just goes back to, there’s so much money being made you have to give the officials a little bit.

And I think I think officials, yes, there’s a handful that just don’t care. And it doesn’t matter what you pay them. But I think for the most part, if you start paying officials a pretty good salary to come do these AAU events, you’re going to see some changes in the officiating.

[00:58:13] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I agree with you. And I think it goes down, it comes back to If you’re a tournament operator, you’re an AAU director, what you have to do is in order to get good people, you have to be willing to pay them a wage that makes it worth their time. And if you don’t, you’re going to end up, as you said earlier, Todd, getting people who are just Hey, I’m willing to do it for 20 bucks a game, or I’m willing to do it for 15 bucks a game, or I’m willing to do it for whatever.

And then it sort of becomes a race to the bottom. And again, ultimately, who suffers? It’s the kids. It’s not, it’s not the adults in that situation. And in some ways the adults benefit from it because whoever’s running that tournament or whoever’s hiring those officials, if I pay them 15 bucks less than market rate, that 15 bucks goes directly.

And so, like I’ve said a couple of times, to me, it always just comes back to what can I do to make the experience better for the kids that I’m supposed to be there serving? And if I’m a coach, how do I do that? If I’m an official, how do I do that? If I’m an AU coach, how do I do that? If I’m a director, how do I do it?

I just think that’s a really, really, Important way that if we could get more people thinking about it from that standpoint, I think we’d be in a much better place.

[00:59:35] Todd Wolfson: Yeah. I mean, I’ll never forget. I saw an official one time, and I guess I respect the hustle a little bit, but he went and officiated two games and then took his referee jersey off and he’s coaching this on the sidelines, coached a couple of games and officiated a couple more games.

He probably had a great financial weekend for him that that made sense, but why that’s allowed and how that’s allowed. Why the system allows someone to do that is not what we should be doing. You know, it’s a disservice to the kids. It’s being officiated and it’s a disservice to the the kids are coaching.

I don’t care who you are ref in five games and then having a coach a bunch there. You’re not giving your best effort.

[01:00:16] Mike Klinzing: No, absolutely not. I mean, there’s no way you can be at your best. And again, it’s not fair to expect somebody to do that. And I know that, look, you can blame that on the official, you can blame that on the tournament director, but if you are having officials ref five, six games in a row, five, six hours, there’s no way that that ref is going to be doing as good of a job in game six as they were in game one. It’s just not humanly possible. All right, let’s leave the rest behind. I want to talk about maybe one more thing unless you have something else that you want to hit on.

And that is five on five for young kids versus three on three. And I’ve made this statement. a bunch of times on the podcast, and I’d love to see it take place. I don’t know how we do it because it kind of goes back to helping parents to understand the benefits of three on three versus five on five, but just share your thoughts about why you think that three on three, if we could get our kids, especially at young ages, playing more three on three and less five on five, why that would benefit us benefit us as a country in terms of basketball and, and what it would do for our youth players.

[01:01:30] Todd Wolfson: Yeah. I mean, three on threes though, an unbelievable way to play. And I think it’s helps kids the time I’ve seen it change kids games drastically especially for youth. Reason one there’s many reasons, but number one, I think obviously is you can’t hide. You know, five on five, there’s, there’s 10 guys on the court.

I can run up my, my kid can run up and down for seven minutes and not touch the ball, not be involved in a pick and roll, not be involved in a miss shot, not be involved in a. Any type of action, he’s just running from corner to corner and hoping to get his spot up three. And on the way back down, the person he’s guarding is hoping to get his spot up three.

So they’re kind of just going back and forth and not involved in any action, not getting better, where if you’re playing three on three, you are involved in every action, every single possession. You can’t hide. If you, there’s a guy we’ve all watched probably three on three at the highest level.

And if you can’t guard, they’re going to go at you every time and they’re going to get you in switches. They’re going to get you moving and they’re taking advantage of any weakness you have. So you know, reason number two is going back to obviously one, you can’t hide. And two is any weakness you have, it gets exploited immediately.

If you’re tiny, you’re getting posted up every play. If you’re slow, you’re we’re, we’re going at you from, from an attack standpoint. I think it’s, it’s very, very good for our youth kids to be playing more and more three on three. Just because it’s, it’s kind of what, what you’ll see in a small in a five on five game, eventually you’ll kind of see that.

But three on three is the best for development, in my opinion.

[01:03:06] Mike Klinzing: Yeah, I could make an argument that if kids never played one second of five on five until seventh grade and all they were allowed to play was three on three, that we end up probably having more skilled players, players with a better basketball IQ than the system we have now.

Cause again, to your point, so often just, it becomes kids practicing their jogging, right? They’re just jogging up and down the floor. Yeah. And they’re not seeing the ball. They’re not involved in the action. Whereas three on three, it’s so much more fast paced. As you said, everybody’s involved in the action.

And I think the obstacle there again is one in the system that we have now, people who are running youth basketball events and are dictating kind of what’s happening. It has to be something that from a business standpoint makes sense. And there are people that are running three on three leagues and that kind of thing, but you just see how much money people can make running five on five tournaments.

And if I’m a business operator, I don’t see the benefit in switching my model and going to three on three. And then conversely, I think with parents. It’s sort of a self fulfilling prophecy there where parents want to be where everybody else is and where everybody else is, is playing five on five. And if I’m somehow playing in this three on three league instead of chasing five on five in AAU, I feel like I’m missing out on quote, the real game.

The real game is played five on five. And for people who don’t understand again, how. young players develop their skills and become good basketball players, you have to be able to be involved in the action. And that’s offensively, defensively, that’s with the ball, that’s without the ball. And as you said, when you’re playing three on three, that happens constantly.

That’s what the game is. Whereas If you’re jogging up and down the floor in an eight year old five on five game, especially if you’re playing on a regulation high school court, which a lot of times you’ll go to tournaments and that’s what you’ll see, the benefit to kids in terms of their basketball skill and basketball acumen is very, very minimal.

Maybe if you’re the best player on each team and you’re getting the ball and getting to bring it up, maybe that helps you a little bit, but most kids just aren’t getting the touches and aren’t getting the opportunity to be involved. So I think if we could somehow continue to get three on three to be seen by more people, hopefully this summer Olympics, when three on three becomes an Olympic sport and more people are exposed to it, hopefully that’ll start to get people maybe to see that it’s a viable way for us to be able to continue to develop our kids.

So, we’ll see if we can get that done. I’m not sure that Long term, how much we can do that. But I think if you’re out there and you’re listening, the more you can get kids in your community playing three on three, the better off, the better off they’re going to be. Is there anything else, Todd, that we didn’t hit on?

Any points that you want to make before we wrap things up?

[01:06:17] Todd Wolfson: No, I think you guys hit on the most of them. Again I don’t want to be the guy that’s telling you, Hey, AAU is the worst thing in the world. It’s not, there’s definitely, again, some positives. I just think there’s got to be a system in place that could benefit everyone.

And I think there is a system that can be possible that does still benefit coaches and benefits players and benefits people that have giant 18 court facilities. And there’s ways that everyone can still make their money and do things the way they want to do them. But in a certain way, that’s a little bit more regulated and a little bit more with the intention of helping kids and helping basketball as a whole so we can get better players and get a better product and educate parents better.

[01:07:03] Mike Klinzing: Well, and I think that as we’ve said a couple of times on the pod, I think that 98 percent of the people out there want to do what’s right by the game of basketball.

And I just think about what we’ve experienced on the podcast and just the number of people who care about this game and want to see it be better. And I think ultimately that’s kind of what our mission is here. And that’s, I know when. You’re putting things out there and talking about some of the things that you see and ways that we can make it better for everybody involved.

And that’s, I think, the goal that anybody who loves the game just wants to see the game grow and see the game get better. And I think there’s a way that we can, as you said, figure out how to maximize the experience for the people that are involved in it and maximize it in such a way that we’re not gouging the people financially who are choosing to be a part of the system.

And yet at the same time, we’re not limiting the ability of people who have started businesses and who run tournaments and who organize. and do all the work. Look, let’s face it. It’s not just nothing to be able to put together a tournament or put together an AAU program. Like that takes work if you’re doing it right.

And so we certainly don’t want to deny those people the opportunity to be able to have a business. But to your point, I think if we go back to the top of the conversation and just thinking about an overarching organization that could require certain things in order for you to be an AAU coach, in order for you to be an AAU tournament operator, in order for you to participate in the system, you would have to be educated and also educate the people who are a part of your program, including both players and parents.

And if we could move in that direction, I think here in the United States, we would have youth basketball in a much better place. Todd, before we get out, share how people can get in touch with you, reach out to you, social media, email, website, whatever. And then after you do that, I’ll jump back in and wrap things up.

[01:09:10] Todd Wolfson: Awesome. Well, again, thanks for having me and loved the conversation and appreciate what you guys do to help move the game in the right direction. You can follow me on Twitter or now it’s X, I guess. My handle is @coachwolfson And then I’m on Instagram. My Instagram handle is @coachtoddwolfson

And yeah, if anyone wants to reach out, love to help anybody that wants help and give my two cents and kind of my experiences. You know, 17 years being a high school varsity head coach and kind of what I’ve seen and my advice to be happy to help anybody that wants some help and advice getting through this game.

[01:09:55] Mike Klinzing: Todd, love the conversation tonight. Hopefully we were able to maybe jumpstart some other conversations and we can continue to maybe move this thing in a direction that benefits everybody involved. So Todd, to you, thanks for coming on. Really appreciate it, being a part of it for the second time. Look forward to doing it again in the not too distant future.

And to everyone out there, thanks for listening and we will catch you on our next episode. Thanks.