Tag: Coach Mike Van Hoozer

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Preparing for the Fall and Beyond

Basketball on floor of empty basketball court

We hope you had a great summer and are back into the flow of the school year! The Spring/Summer season was very impactful for all of our teams, and we are excited to see what the future holds this year and beyond for all of our players. Our goal as coaches is to help them maximize their potential both individually and collectively and prepare them for the next level. While our program is competitive and wants to do our best, we believe that achieving goals and winning are a by-product of focusing on the process of improving every day.

As we begin the new school year, we have been meeting and planning for this next year. Here are some of the things that are coming up in the Fall that may interest you:

  • We will be conducting workouts in the Katy area for our players and teams with some of our coaches and trainers to help them prepare for their school season. Also, some of our Katy Raptors 2024 8th grade teams will be playing in Fall tournaments to complement the school season. Whether you are a current Katy Raptors player or a player who wants to get better and possibly join our program, email Mike Van Hoozer to find out more and to be connected to one of our trainers.
  • We are currently evaluating expanding the number of teams for our high school players. While we have had our Katy Raptors 2022 team playing by grade for the last 3 years, we may look at having a couple of teams at the high school level across 9-12th grade. One possibility would be to have a Varsity and Junior Varsity team. We believe this would help in their development as they move through high school and open up opportunities for high school players that have reached out to our program but could not join a team due to age limitations of our current team. If you are a high school player and are interested in a different and possibly better AAU experience, feel free to email Mike Van Hoozer about your interest in our teams.
  • We also have our Katy Raptors 2025 7th grade team that will be playing school basketball for the first time this year and continuing their AAU tournaments in the Spring/Summer season.

We are always looking to improve the impact that we can make in the lives of our players and teams on and off the court. We feel confident that we have the coaches and trainers to teach them basketball skills and how to play the game the right way. It’s also the X-factors that we want to share that will help them go beyond self-imposed limitations and provide leadership skills that extend beyond the court. Let us know if you want to join in our efforts!

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Preparing for the Fall Season and Beyond

We hope that school is going well for everyone! We encourage so many of our athletes to focus on multiple sports and various forms of training both in season and out of season to maximize their talent and abilities. In our experience and in talking with high school and college coaches, they appreciate and recruit multi-sport athletes because of their versatility, athleticism, and leadership.

Basketball on floor of empty basketball court

As it relates to basketball, we hope everyone is planning for a great Fall and Winter season in both competitive youth leagues, Junior High, and High School. The players on our teams have invested time in their Spring and Summer AAU season to grow and become better and look forward to demonstrating what they have learned for their respective school teams.

Our Academy mission is to use basketball as a vehicle to develop leaders on and off the court, and our focus is to prepare them for the next level of competition including high school and college. We want all of our athletes to be successful and impactful leaders who leverage the skills and core values that they learn through our academy in whatever they do. We are confident that we can teach them to play basketball the right way; the differentiator is developing their leadership and mental toughness skills.

If this sounds like something you would be interested in for your son, check out our teams and programs and email me for more information. If you are not a part of one of our teams or academy, we would love to talk to you to see if it is a fit for your student athlete. All of our teams including our 2022 team, which I personally coach, will be looking for a few select athletes to join us for the Spring/Summer AAU season. We also offer some skills and shooting training for players who might be a fit for our program.

Basketball is an excellent sport to learn teamwork, leadership, and perseverance, and we look forward to helping our athletes develop in all of those areas! After all, we are preparing them for the Fall season and beyond!

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A New Year!

The new year is here, and we are excited to build on the success of our teams and our program from last year! All of our teams grew in skills, experience, and knowledge and are looking forward to the upcoming AAU basketball season.

For 2018, the Van Hoozer Basketball Academy will be supporting 3 teams:

There is a chance that we will have a fourth team as well. Our focus is to develop the whole player – physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Our mission is to develop leaders on and off the court and to prepare all of our players to perform at the next level. For 2018, we will accomplish this mission by continuing to offer these unique programs and opportunities:

  • Playing in the most competitive basketball tournaments
  • Organized basketball and skill development practices through the AAU season
  • “Leadership Moments” during practices where we focus on leadership skill development with all of our players
  • Mental Game Training to help all of our players becoming mentally tough and develop skills and techniques to be resilient and determined
  • NEW: Individual Skill Development – We will also be offering individual skill development for players that want further basketball training including shooting, ball handling, and position player development. Email me if you are interested in reserving a spot for individual training.

While we are not holding open tryouts for our teams, you can still inquire about opportunities to play for one of our teams or to sign up for individual skill development training by emailing me.

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Success Comes From Competing

Summer Prep Showcase Champions

by Coach Mike Van Hoozer

Hard work, discipline, preparation, and focus are necessary ingredients for the recipe for success. The willingness to compete is the temperature that is needed to make these ingredients come to life. As we entered the month of May, our 7th grade Katy Raptors team knew it had what it takes to have success both on and off the court. Their confidence had been developed through practice and tournaments in April and led to more wins against some great teams in May and June.

Summer Prep Showcase Champions

We played in the Houston Hoops “Summer Prep Showcase” in May. Our team went 2-0 in Pool Play, winning in decisive fashion in both of our games. We then advanced to the tournament bracket and went 3-0 in tournament play winning the overall tournament with an overall weekend record of 5-0. We beat some great teams in both the semifinals and the championship game and did it with only 6 players!

In June, we played in a Prime Time Sports Tournament going 5-0 and winning the whole tournament, again with only 6 players due to some injuries. We earned a ton of respect from opposing teams, coaches, players, and people who watched us play in both our May and June tournaments!

Prime Time Tournament Champions

Overall, we are 17-4 through 5 tournaments. Our success as a team led to an at large invitation to play in the Prime Time Sports National Basketball Championship in Dallas July 26-30, 2017. We are really looking forward to this opportunity and are preparing to represent our school and community well! If you want to make a donation to our Basketball Academy to offset the costs of practice facilities, tournament fees, and travel costs, you can make a donation here.

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Building the Foundation

by Coach Mike Van Hoozer

Whether it is building a house, a basketball team, or your life, you must have a solid foundation. For our 7th grade Katy Raptors team, we invested the month of March and part of April in practices to build the solid foundation based on sound offensive principles, a commitment to a tenacious defensive system, and an intense will to get better and compete every day.

This foundation paid off for us as we had a very successful beginning to our tournament season! We have played in the most competitive tournaments in Houston advancing to the Championship Tournament Bracket in each of our April tournaments. Our first tournament was a very competitive Houston Hoops “Off Da Hook” Tournament. There were over 30 teams in this tournament, and we made it to the quarterfinals losing to the eventual champion of the overall tournament.

Our 2nd tournament was the Pearland Classic, which also had over 30 teams in our age group. We went 2-0 in Pool Play and won our Pool to advance to the Championship Tournament Bracket. We advanced to the semifinals losing to the eventual champion of the  tournament, who is one of the top teams in the country. Our 3rd tournament in April was the Kingwood Classic. Again, we went 2-0 in Pool Play and lost a close game in the quarterfinals, after one of our key players could not play due to an injury.

We are so proud of our team and the resiliency they have shown to go out and play against any team and demonstrate the talent and the teamwork they possess. These guys have earned a ton of respect from other teams and their coaches as well as the people who watch us play! The recurring comments include that “they love the way we move the ball,” “we play basketball the way it was meant to be played,” and “we have a tenacious defense!” Our focus as coaches continues to be to help them develop individually and collectively and to develop them as leaders on and off the court.