“We always expect our teams to do well, but teams at every level did really well this year, going above and beyond expectations in many cases. When I say that, I mean you never know exactly what you’re going to get from a particular group of student athletes over the course of a season. A lot can happen, for good and for bad. But I can truthfully say this is one of the best men’s basketball seasons since I’ve been here, and I’ve seen quite a few.”

So says Jeffrey Gonzalez, Director of Basketball at SPIRE Academy. The SPIRE Academy Men’s Basketball season has just ended and Coach Gonzalez does indeed have quite a number of performances—at both the individual and team level—to crow about. Starting in December and lasting until the end of the season, SPIRE Prep was ranked in the top 25 and was able to compete for a national championship. While they did lose in the first round, in the next game, a consolation game, they beat the number four team in the country. Immediately following that win, they beat the team ranked just ahead of them.

What does Gonzalez attribute this above-and-beyond performance to? “First off,” he offers, “we have great student athletes in the program, all of them hardworking and dedicated, on the court and in the classroom. Second, we have amazing staff who put the student athletes first, who are always willing to help these young men and women get where they need to be. Put those two things together and you get the kind of overall performance we saw this past year.”

Beyond SPIRE Prep, High School Red won two smaller championships this season: the High School Diamond Blue Division and the NCAA Division II Championship, held at Mount Vernon University in Ohio. As for individual performances of note, there were many, but perhaps none as noteworthy as that of Sean Register. “Sean was a big performer for us this season. He’s local to SPIRE, and attended Eastlake North High School, which is about 30 minutes away. He came here for a post-grad year and became a team leader almost immediately. Sean’s currently getting a lot of attention from colleges, including Division I. He has at least five scholarship offers already, and I presume they’ll keep coming in.”  

Of course, just because the season has ended doesn’t mean Gonzalez and his fellow coaches won’t be busy. Quite the opposite. Gonzalez: “We’re going to have a big emphasis on our student athletes’ overall skill development in the offseason, to try to further their game. That’s what SPIRE is here for. One of the ways we do this is through high-level coaching, the kind of coaching that prepares them for college-level play. As two examples, we make sure they know how to play a two-three zone or execute a diamond press, as well as how to score against such zones. This kind of coaching was a huge contributing factor to why our teams were as successful as they were this year. Every season is another chance to learn the game and learn how to overcome adversity. Things won’t always go their way. We try to prepare them for both the good and the bad.”