Another way for kids to play basketball in Brentwood

Excel Sports offers league year-round

by Juan Cebreiros Correspondent

In 2017, William Fleming and his wife founded a new basketball league for the city of Brentwood called Excel Sports. The inaugural season was successful with 82 player sign-ups across the leagues five divisions. In the league’s most recent winter season, they had 400 sign-ups and 40 more on a waitlist for the league.

Fleming was an assistant basketball coach for schools in the Bay Valley Athletic League, including head coach for the Pittsburg JV boys team, assistant on the varsity coaching staff, and his current job as head coach of the Heritage Patriots JV boys team.

Fleming said he and his wife created the league because they felt other leagues weren’t run properly and the divisions seem to be geared more towards getting kids ready for high school basketball, rather than for kids who are in high school.

They wanted to create this league to remove aspects they didn’t like from other leagues, such as leagues not focusing on the little things that actually make leagues better like bringing in higher-level referees. He also said other leagues weren’t organized well.

Fleming has his league run for eight weeks, which includes practices, six regular season games, and playoffs. Their games are played at all middle and high school gyms in the Brentwood area, and the league runs all four seasons of the year.

The league bases their divisions not only on age, but skill as well. Fleming has his league set up like this for kids who may be inexperienced in basketball and need a season to sharpen their skills to be ready to play with their age group.

Fleming is detail oriented and organized in running his league, even with players’ statistics being kept during games to help elevate or drop them through the different divisions to best suit each kid with their skills. The league even has the same referees that the local high schools use for their basketball games.

One of the goals of Fleming for his league is to get it into AAU and be able to compete immediately. He added that the league has AAU players who come into the league to play during the offseason and those players have told Fleming that the competition is very similar between the two.

However, Fleming said he doesn’t see it as his league competing with AAU for players but “provides another option for kids who may want to play at the next level.”

He adds that he feels his league is best for this because “we focus on making the overall team play better and teach kids how to move the ball around, which is something high schools put a big emphasis on”.

He gives credit to his volunteers who help coach and says, “Our program wouldn’t be the same without our volunteers”.

While Fleming anticipates more kids wanting to join his league, he said he feels 400 is the perfect number for them as he wants to emphasize quality over quantity for the kids in his league.

For more information or to register, visit excelsportsleague.com

Any bit of momentum Deer Valley had was gone going into the third quarter with the team starting the second half turning the ball over on their first four offensive possessions. The Wolverines were stuck on 29 points for a majority of the third quarter while the Lions offense scored at will. Deer Valley scored just seven points in the third quarter while the Lions grew their lead to 25 points.

In the fourth quarter, nothing changed as the Lions’ blowout continued to the final buzzer.

After the game, Lions head coach Jon Heinz was critical of the team’s energy level early in the game.

“We have lows and highs,” Heinz said. “We gotta do a better job of keeping a consistent energy throughout the entire game. When we play with high energy we’re pretty good, but when we just kind of go through the motions, then we’re just a very average team.”

This win keeps Liberty undefeated in league play at 4-0, 13-5 overall, as they get ready for a tough week against Heritage on Jan. 24 and Pittsburg on Jan. 26 before traveling to play Freedom High School on Jan. 31. All games are scheduled for a 7 p.m tipoff.

The Heritage High School varsity girls basketball team defeated Liberty High School 62-26 on Jan. 24, to remain undefeated at 5-0 in the Bay Valley Athletic League.

All 11 Heritage players scored, led by 10 points from senior Amanda Muse, with junior Aubrey Villamor close behind with 9.

The victory puts the Patriots atop the league standings and their overall standing at 16-4. Heritage hosted Freedom High on Thursday, Jan. 26, and will travel to Antioch High on Tuesday, Jan. 31. Both games start at 7 p.m.