Tag: Zach Wessels

A Chancellor Sabbatical

I know the new curriculum posts have been infrequent lately, but those following my Twitter stream know the main reason: it’s basketball season, and my son Joe and nephew Tom are two of the key players on our Austin High School basketball team.

They’re both juniors and both were named first-team all-conference, along with a sophomore teammate, Zach Wessels. I’ll have some posts in the coming days about how I’m applying the SMUG curriculum and the four basic food groups of social media in support of their team.

But first, I want to share some news coverage about a major achievement of their team, in winning their section championship and earning Austin’s first trip to the Minnesota State Boys Basketball Tournament in 30 years. And they did it in an extremely exciting way, as Joe, Tom and Zach all played a role in rallying to win in the last few minutes.

Here’s an interesting feature story from KTTC-TV in Rochester, featuring someone you all know:

So in a sense I have been taking a sabbatical in my Chancellor role, but as you will see in some upcoming posts, I’ve also been able to experiment with the application of social tools in an area outside of my regular work. I’m looking forward to sharing what I’ve learned in applying social media in high school sports.

Basketball Recruiting Season Begins

My son Joe has just finished his sophomore year of high school, and so as a member of the Class of 2013 this was the first day he could receive calls from Division I basketball coaches, according to NCAA rules. Today he’s talked with coaches from Cal Poly, Illinois-Chicago and South Dakota State. It’s an interesting process, and our first experience with it at the D1 level.

Joe has had a fun spring season with the Minnesota Fury Gold 16U team (along with two other players from his Austin High School team – his cousin Tom, also a sophomore, and freshman Zach Wessels.) Their Fury team is 35-4 on the spring and is playing great team ball. They resume tournament action in July, playing the King James Summer Showcase in Chicago, the Best Buy Pump N Run tournament in Minneapolis and the Adidas Super 64 in Las Vegas.

In June, Joe, Tom and Zach are playing with their Austin High School teammates in several team camps. This weekend they play at Iowa State University in Ames, and last weekend it was in Cedar Falls at University of Northern Iowa. Here are Joe’s highlights from the game against the Howard Pulley 16U team, one of the top AAU all-star teams in the state. Joe was 11/14 from the field (8/9 from three-point range) and had 30 points. The Packers dropped an 86-84 contest on two free throws by Siyani Chambers with :06 remaining.

Note: This video includes every shot Joe took in the Pulley game. I thought it was helpful to show the misses as well as the makes. And at the 1:00 mark I missed the finish on his breakaway dunk. It’s kind of hard to get all the action when you’re sitting under the basket instead of at midcourt.

Here is a more extended highlight reel that is mostly made up of footage from Joe’s sophomore season in high school.

We’re looking forward to what should be a fun Summer. I’ll occasionally post some updates here in the coming months. See the Packer Fast Break Club site for more in-depth coverage.