LaMelo Ball, former student athlete at SPIRE Institute and Academy, is projected to be among the top picks in the first round of the NBA Draft. Originally scheduled to be held at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York, the NBA Draft but will now be conducted at ESPN’s facilities in Bristol, Connecticut on October 16, 2020 via videoconferencing.

Californian LaMelo Ball is the youngest of the three brothers who comprise the Ball family basketball dynasty.  During his freshman season at Chino Hills High School, the 6’ 7”, 181-pound point guard played averaged 16.4 points and 3.8 assists per game, helping the CHHS Huskies finish the season with a 35–0 record.

Ball kicked off his sophomore season by racking up 92 points in one of the team’s early wins–  the second-highest number of points ever scored in a single game in California high school history. Ball finished the season averaging 26.7 points and nearly 10 assists per game, earning MaxPreps Sophomore All-American first team recognition.

In November of 2018, Ball joined SPIRE Institute and Academy (IA) in Geneva Ohio to continue his high school hoops career. According to SPIRE’s Chief Operating Officer Jeff Orloff, SPIRE offered a well-integrated training ground for the young student athlete to continue his intensive training and stay on his chosen path to the pros.

“I think the previous success of our basketball program initially attracted LaMelo and his family to SPIRE,” said Orloff, “but once they visited the campus, I believe they were equally impressed with our high level of coaching, our professional-level facilities, and the access our student athletes get to services such as high level performance and mental skills training as well as a long term view related to their nutritional needs.”

Although Orloff concedes that he can’t guarantee that all of SPIRE’s student athletes will achieve LaMelo Ball’s results, what he can guarantee is that every enrollee will have access to elite programs directed by top coaches and industry experts to help them optimize their athletic and academic abilities. SPIRE is currently offering intense weekend experiences for high school and college student athletes whose seasons have been postponed or cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to its elite high school boarding program, SPIRE Academy also offers internationally recognized Post Grad (PG) programs to graduating seniors who may benefit from a “gap year” before entering college, who need time to improve technically in their sport, or have academic reasons for delaying their college decisions by a year.