September | October 2020

Digital Mag

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2020

BACK TO WORK The Factory vs. Covid 19

ROAD WARRIOR How far would you travel to play with the best?

ATHLETE SPOTLIGHT She Got Next & Bite Size Baller

CERTA-FIED Q&A with D1 Training General Manager, Stefan Certa

SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2020

IN THIS ISSUE 04 Certa-Fied Q&A with Stefan Certa General Manager of D1 Training

09 The Road Warrior How far will you travel to play with the best?

13 Back to Work

CONTRIBUTORS Editor Aueyia Taylor Writer Josh Ayen Photographer David Dixon

Getting back to work during Covid-19

19 Athlete Spotlight She Got Next - Choz’ley Brimmage Bite Size Baller - Cole Isan THE PLUG | 1

FROM THE DESK OF THE DIRECTOR Dear Readers, Welcome to the first of many issues of The Plug Digital Magazine. This will be your one stop guide to everything that is going on at The Factory. We look forward to introducing you to some of our staff and highlighting our athletes.

This year as we celebrated our 3 year anniversary we faced a pandemic that challenged us all. It forced us to look at our policies and procedures in all aspects of business. The Factory and D1 team worked together to get through the uncertainty and reopen our doors to serve our community better than ever.

Kwana Evans

A LEAGUE FOR

EVERYONE

Bite Size League Ages 3-6 Impact League Ages 7-10 5th & 6th Grade League Middle School League High School League 30+ League Indy Pro Am League THE PLUG |Â 6

Q&A with D1’s Stefan Certa

By Josh Ayen

Stefan Certa is the general manager of D1 Indianapolis, located within The Factory. Certa began as a trainer when the facility opened in the Fall of 2017. The Plug’s Josh Ayen connected with Certa to go in depth on D1’s work with athletes of all levels and how the complex has adapted in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thanks for your time Stefan. First off, could you describe your role as general manager for D1 Indianapolis?

I’m the general manager and head strength coach here. I have a team of five coaches and trainers. I supervise them on the coaching side of things, writing programs, supervising the programs they run and getting education for them as they develop as coaches. [I also run] the business side of things: marketing, lead generation, sales, doing all that stuff as well. Handling client problems – it’s important What distinguishes D1 Training from other high-quality strength and conditioning programs catered to elite-level athletes?

It’s the entire facility, and it’s the quality of the facility (and that includes coaching). So the facility is top notch, and that includes The Factory. .

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So we have three basketball courts, that’s where you’re going to get your skill preparation. Then we have our turf, our state-of-the-art weight room and just athletic development area, as well as the recovery room area. So that whole building, having those three pieces where you can get your basketball practice in, your skill development, get your physical preparation in with us (your strength and conditioning) and also recover, all in one building is very unique. That’s why we’re built – the brand is D1 – because it’s just like a D1 facility. You’re going to football, basketball, volleyball, whatever practice.

You’re also going to hit the weights and train very hard and also hit the recovery room and train really hard. Recovery rooms came on to the scene within the last four to five years, but the NormaTecs, the cryo machine, your stim, your ultrasound, whatever you’re getting done, we have it along with the coaches.

All of our coaches are certified… all of them have gone through undergrad to go ahead and coach.

When The Factory opened in 2017, were you part of the original team that planned out the facility with the Teague family?

I came in as a coach, I was just a coach at the time. I was hired in early August [2017] before we opened. I was in here before we even had a weight room.

What has it been like seeing the D1 side of operations grow since The Factory opened three years ago?

It’s been great. [We’ve had] huge growth, we’ve had huge changes. The really cool thing THE PLUG | 5 .

to see being here for so long is to see the kids develop and get older. When you see 11-yearolds come back as a 14-year-old, there’s drastic changes in them. The changes we can continue to make with them through our training is amazing, just so they’re prepared for middle school or prepared for high school. Whatever the next level is, that’s what we’re preparing them to do. So just seeing the development, not only the aesthetics of the facility and the staff, but of the kids obviously training and getting better. It’s amazing.

You mentioned the development seen at the youth level. What is it like to work with older prospects at the college and even professional level?

I humbly say this, but I believe we have the best basketball in the city. Professional players, semi-pro players, just amazing talent coming through and that’s on the basketball side. We also have a lot of high-level athletes from all over the place. We’ve trained kids that do sports that you wouldn’t even think of. Some kids do robotics, since we’re in Speedway we get some guys [that] race – it’s not always cars but it could be BMX. The training has to be highlevel because you’re getting a lot of people that are high level, which doesn’t mean that the training has to be super advanced, but it has to be super locked in and it has to be programmed and planned.

How have you adjusted your programming in wake of the COVID-19 pandemic?

Yeah, March to May was awful. Obviously, we were closed, and we did the best we could to offer services online and still try to cater to our clients that were still trying to stay fit

It was just so unprecedented, and nobody knew what was going on.

So those were tough, but right when we got the go-ahead, we wanted to be a safe zone and place that could get it done and get people back.

Athletes can’t take a day off without feeling like they’ve taken a year off.

That’s just an athlete. They don’t work out for two days, they feel terrible, and there’s a mental aspect to that. You’ll also start to detrain very quickly.

So we wanted to make sure that we got our workouts up and running as fast as possible (obviously by the rules), just getting it done as best as we could so we can cater to the athlete.

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We started off with restricted groups, we had them spaced out with an hour. Obviously, a lot of masks going on, sanitation going on a ton, and then just kind of working it back.

Now we’re starting to get back to our full schedule.

We’re still restricting our group sizes right now, but it’s starting to come back to normal.

I will say from a business standpoint though, people want to train right now. It’s really hot, so business hasn’t really been terrible if that makes sense.

People are coming to the gym, athletes are really wanting to get to the gym. And I know schools – it’s tough for them right now. They’re on this weird half people in, half people out. Some schools, some athletes are only able to get in with their weight coach (and I’m talking about high school) like once or twice a week. When you go from four times in the weight room and practicing five times a week to maybe only having three or four workouts a week, that’s a huge change, especially for athletes who are trying to get a scholarship for college or even pro guys or guys who are on the bubble and trying to get in the league (whatever league it is).

It’s so tough, so they’re just trying to stay ready and we want to be part of that process.

Is there anything else that you want to mention about D1 that I haven’t asked about already?

I think it’s important to decipher between the two, that The Factory is basketball training and that we [D1] are athletic development, physical preparation, whatever you want to say in that realm, but it’s different. There’s things you do with a basketball, and then what we’re doing is working on is your engines, your body. I think that can be sometimes tough for some people to differentiate, like, ‘Oh, we’re playing basketball.

We’re working on our body.’ When it comes to performance, those two are separate, and it’s very important because we’re working on specific things on our side (again) physical preparationwise, on the other side they’re working on skill development.

We work with all ages and all levels, so we do have a lot of high-level athletes. We also have a lot of adults, and we also have a lot of youth athletes.

[We work with] all sports, even though we have a basketball gym, we train everybody.

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SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2020

The Road Warrior

By Josh Ayen

It’s a Friday afternoon in the dog days of Summer, and ER nurse Wende Mitchell is driving in her white 2017 Ford Explorer.

Mitchell is in the middle of a familiar 2and-a-half-hour trip from her home in southeastern Illinois to Indianapolis with her son, Jaylan. Jaylan, only 12 and dreaming of a future involving basketball, plans to compete in a weekend tournament at The Factory with his Team Teague teammates. Upon arrival, Mitchell makes sure her son meets up with the team and they exchange a brief goodbye.

Mere minutes after making the drive to Indianapolis, Mitchell turns around and heads back home. As long as traffic is okay on the way back, Mitchell should return in time to see her youngest daughter perform that night in a dance recital.

The wee hours of Saturday morning roll around. Mitchell wakes her daughter and other son at 4 a.m. This time Mitchell will drive her younger children back to Indianapolis in time for Jaylan’s first game of the weekend.

After a weekend full of basketball, Mitchell and all three children drive home to southeastern Illinois. By Sunday night, Mitchell will have driven over 500 miles on two round trips between her home and Indianapolis.

“I put a ton of miles on my car,” Mitchell jokes.

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Consider this a normal weekend for the mother of three. On top of her responsibilities as a parent and as a nurse, Mitchell is taking classes to become a certified nurse practitioner. At this point in her life, the working mother of three runs on coffee and minimal hours of sleep.

How does Mitchell juggle work, school and active children?

Extreme planning.

“When your schedule is tight, and you’re a single mom juggling three kids and your own work schedule and school, you plan. You’re a planner.”

Mitchell was accustomed to juggling multiple responsibilities for years, but her hours on the road significantly skyrocketed three years ago when Jaylan was invited to play with Team Teague. Jaylan’s love of basketball began at an early age when he played for local AAU teams in southeastern Illinois. At one point, Jaylan was invited to play with a Terre Haute program at a tournament in Indianapolis.

That tournament was the annual Team Teague Invitational.

Jaylan played well throughout that tournament, catching the eyes of various coaches from the Team Teague program. After talking with coaches and parents of children who play on Team Teague, Mitchell opted to let her son play with the Indianapolis program, despite

being hundreds of miles away in another state.

What won Mitchell over was how Team Teague embraced a sense of family within the program. Mitchell has become a road warrior for the last three years, juggling a dizzying schedule between work, school and shuttling her kids to and from extracurricular activities. It is a lot to handle at times, but Mitchell has benefitted from an occasional assist from her Team Teague family. Jordon Felder, Jaylan’s current coach with Team Teague, has been more than willing to lend a helping hand to the Mitchell family when needed.

“Wende does a great job of getting Jaylan to games,” Felder said. “If there’s ever an issue that pops up – of her maybe needing some help getting him there, or him needing a place to stay – he’s always been welcome to stay with me, and there’s also been a couple other coaches that have been a big resource and a big help with making sure Jaylan has a place to stay overnight.”

Mitchell echoed these sentiments, listing a few instances where Felder, another Team Teague coach or a family of one of Jaylan’s teammates will carpool or provide a place for Jaylan to stay overnight.

The willingness of parents and coaches to help alleviate THE PLUG | 10

Mitchell’s schedule is one way her family has benefitted from the family-oriented structure of Team Teague.

Mitchell has also appreciated how Team Teague has kept Jaylan humble through his early success. Jaylan, currently scheduled to graduate high school in 2027, plays up a class with Felder’s Team Teague 2026 unit. The 12-year-old has performed very well against older, more experienced kids, according to Felder. One-the-court development is important for the Team Teague coaches, but teaching these young kids life lessons off the court is just as paramount.

Team Teague’s balanced approach towards development is the biggest reason why she’s glad her son plays for this program, even if she has to sacrifice some extra time on the road.

“When you think about AAU, these families and people are people that have a big influence on your child’s life,” Mitchell said. “You’re going, pretty much, on vacations with these people because you’re traveling so much. [Team Teague has] probably been the best program, family-wise and coach-wise, that we’ve seen."

Now with COVID-19 affecting her area of work and everyday life, Mitchell has had to add another flaming torch to her seemingly endless juggling act. Mitchell continues to plan as best as she can and embrace the chaos that comes with being a mother of three active children.

Is It It in in Is you? you?

BACK TO WORK How The Factory has Adapted During the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Josh Ayen THE PLUG |Â 13

Since opening in 2017, The Factory has been a Shutting the doors during that time – that part basketball hub for thousands in the Indianapolis wasn’t an issue at all – that was what needed to be community. Players of all ages could train within the done,” The Factory CFO Shawn Teague said in a D1 strength facilities, develop their basketball skills phone interview. During the weeks of the statewide and even receive superior quality recovery all in one shelter-in-place order, very few were allowed inside location.

The Factory. Only Teague, his sons and daughter and a select few were allowed in the facility while the During The Factory’s busiest season in the summer, sports world was shut down. the familiar sounds of shoes squeaking, bouncing basketballs and spirited competition filled the 3- Nearly two months after the state shut down, Gov. court gymnasium daily. Kids aged four through high Eric Holcomb introduced Indiana’s guidelines for school competed on the same floor used by NBA reopening. Included in the plan was a target date for players like Jeff Teague and Lance Stephenson. gyms and athletic facilities to reopen on June 1.

Meanwhile, Teague went to work planning how The The bustling facility fell eerily quiet when COVID-19 Factory would reopen its doors while complying with spread across Indianapolis and the rest of the the state’s reopening guidelines. country. Several businesses in the Indianapolis “Shutting the doors during would shut their doors, including The Factory.

that time – that part wasn’t an issue at all – that was what needed to be done.”

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“We wanted to make sure that we could get [The Factory] out there and get it exposed to the community more in terms of marketing and things like that,” Teague said.

Figuring out a New Normal Teague and his team based their reopening strategy on what guests were comfortable with at the time. The first steps were focused on individual or small group sessions within the facility’s D1 strength and conditioning team. Shortly after the D1 facility reopened, the basketball courts were

reopened for individual training sessions.

Still, Teague realized the frenetic pace of events at The Factory would not come back overnight. Even though there have been numerous tournaments, showcases and camps since reopening, Teague admitted the pace of these events have slowed down significantly.

New protocols meant to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 have affected the overall atmosphere of these events. All guests, players and guests, are required to wear masks upon arrival. Showers in the locker room facilities have been closed indefinitely. And when a team is finished with a game, they must exit immediately out a back entrance.

Despite foot traffic slowing down compared to pre-pandemic times, Teague is pleased with the overall quality of programs The Factory has hosted since reopening in June.

A Different Summer of AAU Ball Some of the best events have come on the AAU circuit as local high school prospects are looking for opportunities to prove they can compete at the next level.

During these uncharacteristic times, shoe companies like Nike, Adidas and Under Armour canceled tournaments that were often recruiting hotspots for college basketball coaches.

Along with the cancellations, the NCAA enforced a recruiting “dead period,” barring coaches from any inperson evaluations, visits or campus tours.

With no national circuits and college coaches forced to resort to phone calls and other means of communication with recruits, Teague and the staff saw an opportunity for The Factory and hundreds of basketball prospects in need of exposure.

Using platforms like BallerTV and a partnership with a local media production company, The Factory livestreamed hundreds of contests featuring premiere AAU programs and prospects in the Midwest. So far, The Factory’s move to invest in more livestreaming has been a wise decision.

“We were able to level the playing field where we get a lot of livestream events, which our biggest focus was being able to get out to the coaches and being able to have our kids being seen on those lines,” Teague said.

One of the more notable tournaments this summer the George Hill Invitational on Fourth of July weekend.

Hundreds of youth basketball players from clubs like EG10, Indiana Elite and Team Teague competed on the hardwood, with several local names putting on awe-inspiring performances for those watching in-person and from afar.

Teague plans to expand The Factory’s livestreamed events beyond AAU tournaments to events such as Summer pro am tournaments and even the facility’s 30 and over league.

Like the youth basketball tournaments, Teague wants to provide an opportunity for players competing in the

“pro am league to continue playing basketball professionally.

“We have young men that are trying to look at opportunities for jobs overseas and different places at the professional level. A lot of times when we can provide those type of livestreams, that helps them,” Teague said.

For now, COVID-19 remains a part of everyday life.

As a result, Teague is incorporating more livestreaming at The Factory to provide coaches and fans an opportunity to stay up to date on events within the facility.

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ATHLETE

t h g i l t Spo

Name: Choz’ley Brimmage Age: 6 Favorite subject in school: Recess What other sports do you play?

Soccer, swimming and running Favorite song: Whatever is on the radio Favorite movie: The Little Rascals Favorite thing about basketball: Playing defense

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ATHLETE

t h g i l t Spo

Name: Cole Isan Age: 4 Favorite Basketball Player: Michael Jordon Favorite Team: Chicago Bulls Favorite Song: Rockstar by Juice WRLD What do you like the most about playing basketball?

I just like playing basketball because it is fun!

TheFactory D1indy