As the summer heats up, hundreds of athletes made their way to the South Germantown Recreational Park this past weekend for various outdoor sports. While the scenery provided a great setting to play outside, it did not stop college coaches in the region and the top basketball recruits from traveling to the state-of-the-art, multi-sport indoor Discovery Sports Center, for the DC Metro Summer Showcase.
The Discovery Sports Center (DSC) proved to be an excellent venue for this particular basketball invitational, as no player or coach had to travel from facility to facility for games throughout the weekend. Spectators entered through the double doors of DSC and were immediately greeted with wide-sweeping view of games being played on all 8 basketball courts. It was almost hard to imagine how different the facility will look come winter with two synthetic turf fields set-up on the 46,000 square foot arena floor for indoor field sports- I will have to come back to see that transition for myself!
Coaches from over forty colleges including Seton Hall, Bowie State, West Virginia State, Frostburg and Catholic University also made the trip to Boyds to get a first-hand look of college basketball’s future NCAA athletes.
The prospective pool of athletes featured talent throughout 14U to 17U age groups from Baltimore, Washington D.C., Philadelphia, New Jersey, Virginia, Albany (NY), York, PA and Wilmington, who came to the invitational to seize the opportunity to showcase their talent in front of NCAA recruiters.
Anybody who was on hand were treated to over 70+ games throughout the weekend. However, there were no bigger winners than players’ families and friends watch their loved ones pick up offers from Division II schools. After the continuous basketball action where players left everything on the court, four teams were crowned champions and capped off an eventful weekend:
14U Championship: The 6th Man Warriors, coached by Byron Mouton, former captain of the 2002 University of Maryland’s National championship team
15U Championship: Maryland 3D
16U Championship: Cecil Kirk
17U Championship: Albany City Rocks Orange, Nike sponsored grassroots basketball program
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iR1A1uJ6iTc]
