Blast From The Past

I’m just thinking about how this has changed from when I first became involved, over 20 years ago and I can go on and on about what’s different yet if this is all you know, it’s hard to have logical conversations. I ran into a good friend of mine, James Daniel, as we helped revamp the Houston Insiders and did some damage not only knocking off many of the so-called “top teams” but helping, I don’t know, over 60 players achieve their next-level dreams

I was searching for a program where both of my daughters could play together after being on teams where she wasn’t playing in the right position. Houston Elite came at me first about my older daughter, 9th grade, and I told him my younger, 7th grade, could compete, his exact words were “I don’t listen to parents” so that took care of that because I’m not some ordinary parent. Coach Daniel called me and told me he wanted to start a team, his family and my then-wife’s family went to school together and his professionalism sold me immediately

He showed up at my younger daughter’s game, introduced himself in person, and as my daughter was getting the hell beat out of her and the refs weren’t calling anything, I went off and was ejected from the gym, ironically we were up by 30, yet a few days later he called and we set up tryouts. I told him “You’re a better man than me after seeing how I acted” and his response was “Mr. Colson, I was recruiting your daughter, not you” and THAT in itself sold me

He orchestrated the right events for the team to be successful, meaning playing in front of college coaches, and our program was one of the first teams in Texas to play in NCAA Certified events, other than AAU Nationals because of the abundance of college coaches in attendance. This helped my daughter get on the map early and she had over a dozen D1 offers before entering high school and over 100 by her junior year

We made so many memories together yet the main thing was putting players in a position to succeed and that’s what it was about for us so when I see teams who are still doing that, it makes me smile