Trotwood and Dunbar Boys Basketball going to the State finals- starts me thinking, again…
In Dayton we take basketball seriously. Well, almost seriously. Blasphemy you say? Hear me out on this.
We’re as provincial with our basketball training programs as we are with our “economic development†competition between municipalities. We don’t have a city wide, organized basketball development program- with a full time staff, scheduling services, training programs for coaches and officials etc. This is similar to the many uncoordinated youth hockey programs in Cleveland that don’t produce many NHL players- even though Cleveland has one of the highest densities of indoor ice rinks per capita in the world (according to former Miami University Hockey boss Jack Vivian [1] 20 years ago).
Vivian was recruited to go up to Detroit and organize all the rinks to work together to “tier†players- and build a true developmental system for the Detroit Hockey community. This could be how Dayton puts itself on the map as a great place to live and raise future NBA players.
Not to take anything away from Trotwood and Dunbar, and the powerhouse women’s teams we’ve produced at CJ, Beavercreek and Fairborn, but a coordinated program could elevate both our basketball talent production- and our city pride.
Note- through all of this- I’m talking City as in all of Montgomery County- not just the city proper (the view we HAVE to take to move forward).
When The Next Wave [2] (my ad agency) works with companies to build successful strategies to market themselves- I always look to build on strengths- what do you do best, what is most profitable, what is the low hanging fruit- so that we can make significant progress quickly. This is the opposite of typical behavior in Dayton – where we throw extra effort to fix the broken things, instead of driving the natural successes (witness the “Downtown Dayton Partnership [3]†being funded by taxes, while the Oregon District Business Association [4] has to hit its members up for funding- to fight city hall).
With the coming Kroc center, with the new city rec center or centers [5], and with so many people running around focusing on what to bring to town- why don’t we focus on what we have, make it great, and see what happens.
So- Go Trotwood, Go Dunbar- and let’s go Dayton- start turning us into Hoopsville USA- home of the best youth basketball programs in the county- instead of chasing the idea of the grass is greener plans of tech-town, composites or RFID.
Do you think we should “Just do it†for an Regional integrated basketball developmental program?