Prep program keeping girls in the game

It used to be a struggle to get players. This year, though, IDCI’s basketball teams had more players than spots. Instead of making cuts (and potentially losing players for good), Mike Bourgeois created a unique development program.

Instead of cutting players, basketball coach Mike Bourgeois started a development program for players to continue improving their skills — and get game action. (Photo: Kaci Bourgeois/Special to Gameday London).

* * *

It has always been a numbers game for Mike Bourgeois.

“Every year, we struggle to get numbers. Every year. It’s been a fight to get enough girls to fill out the team,” said the Ingersoll District Collegiate Institute (IDCI) Senior Girls basketball head coach.

That is, until recently.

“Now, we see the number of girls going out for the team going up, and interest in the game is growing. So, we needed to figure out a way to keep players interested and developing.”

Inspired by the NBA G League, Bourgeois’ solution to rising interest was to create the province’s first preps development team – a “farm system,” of sorts, that looks to produce the next generation of players for the Blue Bombers. It’s an idea that is not only working at IDCI but is also growing across the increasingly basketball-mad region.

Last season, the numbers “weren’t spectacular” at IDCI, with only 12 girls trying out for the Senior Girls basketball squad. But this season? Twenty-one girls showed up to try out for the team.

Traditionally, the school of 300 students is a volleyball powerhouse, where basketball has been low on the radar. The emergence of hoops has been exciting for all involved with the program.

“I had never seen numbers like that. It was inspiring. Girls were taking notice of what we’re trying to do, and they want to play,” Bourgeois said. “Some of them were raw, some had skill and needed developing. But they were there.”

You can find arguments on both sides of cutting kids from sports teams – or ‘deselection,’ as it’s known in academic circles. But nobody disagrees that getting cut from a team hurts.

Studies show the negative emotional, social, and physical consequences that come with it. Young athletes are forced to find new social circles, question their own identities, and sometimes feel lost and adrift. Often, cutting a player deters them from future participation in the sport, with numbers ranging between 60% and 90% leaving the game completely, depending on the study.

Those are particularly detrimental numbers when you’re trying to grow a program.

“That night of the tryouts, I pondered if there was only some way we could keep these girls around to develop,” Bourgeois said. “The stats show it – if you’re cut from a team, most kids aren’t coming back. You’re just losing those girls forever and the program dies.

“I thought there had to be a way to create something like a farm system. There’s nothing in the rules that says I can’t have a development team. It’s my gym time. I have to coach it. So why not try it?”

Bourgeois spoke with IDCI athletic director Chris Adkins about an idea. The thought was simple. Alongside the Senior and Junior Girls teams, Bourgeois would coach a development team that worked on skills, learned the offensive and defensive systems, and got some on-court, game-time experience in exhibition games.

The players met the idea with enthusiasm. And why not? Nobody was getting cut.

IDCI players at practice. (Photo: Kaci Bourgeois/Special to Gameday London).

Members of the 10-player development team are locked in for the year – although they are not eligible to be ‘called up’ for the Senior Girls team like their younger teammates on the Junior Girls squad.

The challenge, Bourgeois knew, would be keeping the development team motivated without the carrot of a full slate of games to play. So, the coach did something about that, too.

Recruiting teams from other area schools, Bourgeois put together a six-game (and growing) exhibition schedule for the IDCI development team.

Thus far this season, the development team has proven successful. With four games under the team’s belt, the coach has seen exactly what he’d hoped: Strong fundamentals. Ball movement. Understanding of the system. Improvement every game. Growing confidence.

“Every game, they’re showing lots of potential. Next year is looking pretty bright,” Bourgeois said. “This is a good building block for them, a place to start where next year, hopefully, they’ll be ready to advance and make a Junior or Senior team.”

The idea is catching on, with Huron Park (Woodstock), St. Mary’s (Woodstock), and John Paul II (London) starting to run prep development teams. In fact, when IDCI faced John Paul II recently, it was perhaps the country’s first-ever matchup between prep development squads.

“People are taking notice that there is more than one way we can accomplish the goal of developing these girls as players. Maybe in the next couple of years, we’ll start to see more and more of them,” Bourgeois said. “We’re not the NBA, but if we can adopt the same mindset of taking a chance on these kids … It just takes people to spend the time with them to develop them properly.”