Choose your own adventure: How players navigate the elite basketball landscape
Elite high school players have more options today than ever. Two media companies are shaking up the old order.
Two cutting-edge leagues are transforming high school basketball
For these media companies, the goal is to build profitable brands in youth sports. For the players the goal is to wear an NBA uniform one day.
Too much, too soon? Elite high school sports put young athletes in a pressure cooker
More young players are dealing with anxiety as they cope with their own goals and the expectations of coaches and parents.
High Stakes Hoops
Elite high school basketball changed the game for Bishop Walsh in Cumberland, Maryland.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
The chances of a high school basketball player making it to the professional ranks are ridiculously remote. Less than one half of one percent go all the way.
Yet that dream is propelling major changes in elite youth basketball. The traditional path to stardom remains the local high school team. For the most talented players, however, there are new options.
Sports media brands Overtime and ESPN are investing in creative new ventures aimed at developing teen players into tomorrow’s NBA superstars.
ESPN is backing the National Interscholastic Basketball Conference (NIBC), a super league of top-rated high school players. Overtime has answered with Overtime Elite, an ultra-exclusive development program that is professionalizing teen basketball.
The new landscape has meant major changes at Bishop Walsh School, a small Catholic school in Cumberland, Maryland which joined the NIBC in 2021.
How are youth players and their families navigating these changes? How are traditional high schools adjusting? What are the new pressures on elite young athletes?
“High Stakes Hoops" is a four-month enterprise project looking at the changing world of elite youth basketball.
The project includes four text stories and a mini documentary, winner of the best documentary short at the 2022 Queen City Film Festival. The project was produced by students at the Shirley Povich Center for Sports Journalism at the University of Maryland Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
