Brighton Cougars have joined up with Brighton based South Coast Elite Basketball
Posted by on 18 November 2013
Brighton Cougars have joined up with Brighton based South Coast Elite Basketball (SCEB) who are going to support Cougars in coaching players who demonstrate an outstanding commitment to the game and a desire to progress. TheSCEB program with Cougars will run elite sessions. In these regular practices, emphasis will be placed on developing a series of professional-style drills and skills that are used by advanced basketball coaches and players.
The progress of players in these sessions will allow Cougars to assess the potential for a return to Junior National League with appropriate age groups in the 2014/15 season.
Head Coach at SCEB is Tom Ward who is already coaching Cougars u14’s and U18 teams. Tom grew up in Brighton, attending Dorothy Stringer school, having became involved in basketball from an early age. At 17 years old he earned the chance to attend Modesto Christian High School in California, USA and play for the renowned Bay Area Hoosiers AAU team at tournaments in Las Vegas, Oakland, Los Angeles and Houston. After a year in California, Tom moved back across the Atlantic to play at the Canarias Basketball Academy in Gran Canaria, Spain, which boasts a tradition of producing players that currently perform in the NBA.
Following his time in Gran Canaria Tom was recruited to play at St. Francis College, an NCAA Division 1 University in the USA, spending one year there before transferring to NCAA Division 2 St. Michael’s College. Tom spent three years at St. Michael's College, captaining the team in his “senior” year. In Tom's final year in the United States he worked for a non-profit mental health organization named the Howard Center, supervising a program that served as a transition residency for Juvenile Offenders. This year Tom returned to England, and will be playing professional basketball for the Worthing Thunder, as well as coaching basketball in various schools in Brighton and Sussex. This list includes Dorothy Stringer, Hove Park, BACA (Brighton) and Stanford Junior School.
You can find more about about Tom and SECB here:
