NorCalPreps.com
by- Jason Green
Often, the best locations are right in your backyard. When it comes to skill training and personal development through basketball for kids ages 7-14, Tony Freccero and his Triple Threat Academy provide the optimal experience. Recently arrived home from a major trip to Brazil, we caught up with Tony to find out more about his clinics, training philosophies, and future events.
Tony Freccero loves basketball just like most other coaches who spend almost all their time working with kids in a gym. The only difference is location since Freccero will travel anywhere to help any kid, including Brazil.
After a playing career that included stints under the legendary Mike Phelps at Bishop O’Dowd and some college ball at California State Hayward, Freccero spent the most recent few years back at O’Dowd enhancing his knowledge and merging his ideas with burgeoning training guru, Lou Richie. The work with Richie both at O’Dowd and during the slew of Oakland Soldiers’ workouts, personal training sessions for the elite prep players in NorCal, and basically any chance to help any kid with his/her game, led to the creation of The Triple Threat Academy.
Freccero realized very quickly a void in the training regimen of most camps, namely the lack of focus on the kids themselves. Instead of always attempting to cater to the best and most prominent athletes out there, TTA endeavors to provide an ideal growth experience for any kid on the court, in life, and overall. This means drills emphasizing tons of positive reinforcement, constant opportunity for success, and an undying desire to make every kid feel good about picking up a basketball. There’s also the teaching of effort and hard work so the youngsters can learn to succeed through their best effort and feel good about giving 100% at anything they do in life.
Notes Freccero, “Very few kids get all the headlines and have scouts running after them all the time. Those remaining kids need attention and a chance to learn the game without feeling like they must be an all-star first.”
Yet Freccero’s work with Richie has reinforced the needs of all players to develop proper skills in all the basic areas or else everyone gets frustrated. Therefore, TTA created a curriculum to specifically target the areas most troublesome for younger players. Through healthy competition and constant reiteration of the components comprising any basic skill, Freccero has created an environment exciting kids, making them enthusiastic about basketball, and giving the parents a good feeling they spent their money on their kids, not thrown away to someone trying to make money.
Over the last two weeks, Freccero traveled to Brazil to participate in two different camps, one most notable for it’s sponsorship by the NBA targeting the Top 50 prep level players in South America. The other camp worked with impoverished Brazilian youth of Bolar Basketball School, attempting to teach some skills and provide an opportunity for basketball coaches and training experts to work with kids otherwise incapable of experiencing real instruction. This trip solidified Freccero’s desire to work with any kid and he found the hunger to learn universal.
“In our TTA camps, we often have kids scared to try, nervous about making mistakes, and unsure to try anything new. The Brazilian kids acted exactly the same so we employed the same techniques we use in the States. By the end of the week, the Brazilian kids didn’t want to go home, just like our local kids who can’t believe five days passes so quickly. I had the time of my life.”
Back home for the rest of the summer save his obligations with the Oakland Soldiers, Freccero and TTA offer more camps to close out the summer and help as many kids better their basketball skills. For more information including camp dates, locations, pictures, testimonials, and other events check out www.triplethreatonline.com