STACK Nation – End of Fall Season ’24

STACK Nation,

We have come to the end of our Fall AAU season and I’d like to sincerely thank everyone (players, parents/families, coaches, admin) very very much for everything this season.

From a personal standpoint, this has been my 2nd Fall season at STACK (I started in March 2023) and to see how far this program has come in such a short time is absolutely incredible and it has been such a team effort with not only everyone who has participated this Fall season, but in seasons past that continues to carry the culture and atmosphere we have built and continue to build.

We place a big premium on character development, learning through failure/adversity, preparing to win by developing winning habits, and concrete fundamentals to enhance consistency just to name a few.  We expect our players to give maximum Focus & Effort and display great Attitudes and exude the 3 levels of Toughness (mental/emotional/physical).  More importantly, we want the things that we are teaching and holding our players accountable to, to extend way beyond the basketball court and into their everyday life.  Success in life (anywhere) is going to require all of these same characteristics and it starts with discipline as discipline leads to habits – habits leads to consistency – consistency leads to success.

We know that the things we are teaching will make them become better basketball players and teammates.  We hope that every player carries what we teach when they leave our facility to allow them to become better students, siblings, friends, musicians, artists etc etc.

With regards to becoming better players and teammates, winning becomes the byproduct.  While this Fall season has been one of STACK’s most successful seasons, it’s not a coincidence that the byprodcut (winning) is starting to show.  https://www.instagram.com/p/C5hMVWrMoyh/

When I first arrived back in March of 2023, it had been a VERY long time since ANY team at STACK won a championship.  In fact, the only teams that won were the teams of players that had been playing with me for a long time and came over to STACK with me.  Then, in Summer of 2023 the first team of “newbies” won STACK’s first championship.  This Fall season, we have had the most championships than STACK has ever had.

Here’s a shout out to our championship winning teams:

While the teams above got over the final hurdle, we had so many teams come close to a championship.  I know we have learned from those situations and gotten to work hard the next day.  The comeback is always greater than the setback.

With the upcoming Winter seasons (high school, travel, rec, cyo, aau) upon us, I will be sure to post some tryout/season thoughts/reminders for all players to read/view and utilize throughout the season as well as additional thoughts/articles.

To all of our players, thank you for allowing us the opportunity to coach you and help you grow as players and people.  We hope that through the course of the season, you have made new friends, learned something new about the game of basketball, and most importantly (and something that cannot ever be forgotten) had fun playing the game of basketball.

Just like with you players, as a coaching staff and organization we will continue to grow and develop and accentuate our positives and eliminate our negatives to make each coming season better than the last.  As always, please don’t hesitate to reach out with feedback regarding this past season (thank you to those who have done so already).

We also really ask that in your feedback you let us know the things we are doing well and if you can leave us a review via this link (https://g.page/r/CW–_lu5ldBxEAE/review) it would be extremely appreciated.  While I know so many of you give us great reviews & references via word of mouth, in today’s world so many people do use the reviews to help them make decisions so it would greatly help our program if the things you say could be for all to see.

For those interested in continuing playing AAU with us this Winter, we have tryouts this upcoming weekend (Sat/Sun) as well as makeups on Monday so that we can have teams finalized prior to Thanksgiving and start practices the first week of December.  You can register for tryouts via this link: https://www.stacknj.com/aau-basketball/#tryout-schedule

Be advised that all HS tryouts will be the following week as tryouts and rosters are in progress up until Thanksgiving weekend.

Practices for the Winter season will be Mondays and Wednesdays and all practices are for 60 minutes.  All players (regardless of team placement) will choose from one of the 3 participation packages that you can find via this link: https://www.stacknj.com/aau-basketball/season-programs/

Speaking of tryouts and preparing for the Winter season, our winter season/tryout prep bootcamp has two more sessions left that you can still register for via this link: https://www.stacknj.com/basketball-tryout-prep-bootcamp/

Finally, we have a number of “No School” camps during the Winter season with Black Friday camp and Winter Break camp being the next two up on the slate that you can find via this link: https://www.stacknj.com/no-school-basketball-camp/

We wish everyone a happy holiday season and best of luck to everyone in their upcoming winter sports/activities.

– Coach Atom