Many children grow up with dreams of becoming the next Michael Jordan, Larry Byrd or Shaquille O'Neal. Yet only an infinitesimal percentage of these young dreamers will ever even get a roster spot on a Division I college basketball team. So what can the vast majority of recreational hoops players do to continue to play the game that they love at a high level?
Recently, a new option has opened up for talented hardwood junkies at Virginia. There is now a fledgling Virginia men's club basketball team tearing up the courts at the AFC.
"It is like a JV collegiate level," club officer Clark Walker, a senior, said.
Junior Grant Shifflett is the president of the club. Shifflett is in the process of trying to organize a league consisting of local schools.
"We are in the process of setting one up right now," Shifflett said. "There is a club president at VCU who is trying to make one with six to 12 teams, and we are part of it. We e-mailed 13 teams."
Many of the local club basketball teams are relatively young. With no clearly dominant team in the region, a well-organized Virginia squad could have the chance to become a leading area team.
"There are a lot of schools that do not have teams," Shifflett said. "JMU has had a team for five years. VCU has had one for the last two years. We are one of the newest."
Finding opponents to play has proven difficult for the team.
Scheduling games "has mostly consisted of calling teams from other universities and setting up games with them," Walker said. "We really have not had a lot of success, just because there are not a lot of teams in the Virginia area that have club basketball teams."
Finding time to practice is one of the main problems that these Cavaliers face. In stark contrast to the $130 million John Paul Jones arena being built for the men's varsity basketball team, the club team barely is able to get time on the courts at the AFC.
"The problem is getting times for the gyms," Shifflett said. "The schedule is really hard to arrange."
The team traveled to Atlanta for a tournament two weeks ago and finished 17th out of a field of 35 teams. Virginia also beat James Madison in a scrimmage earlier this year.
"We beat them by 20," Walker said of the Dukes. "It was a pretty informal scrimmage. It was very good -- we showed a lot of improvement from where we were before."
Many students have shown interest in playing for the team, so Shifflett has had to turn some prospective players down.
"I think that we have an extremely competitive program," Shifflett said. "I have gotten emails from guys that played varsity in high school and sent me their stats. I hated to turn them down because we had already started the season. I asked them to come back in the fall -- I think that every year it will grow."
Shifflett also is considering expanding the club next year.
"I think that the possibility of two teams next year is there," he said. "This is something that is really fun."
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