‘Getting them to school for free’: How basketball – and a determined coach – create chances for college
L.J. Ginnis, a former AZ Compass Prep basketball star, will be the first in his family to go to college when he heads to Howard College in Big Spring, Texas, this month.
With the help of AZ Compass Prep and AAU coach Erik Hood, Ginnis earned a full basketball scholarship to play for Howard College.
While he held offers from 11 schools, including two in Division I — which ultimately didn’t work out because of last-minute coaching changes — Ginnis said he believed Howard was the best choice for him.
“(Coach Hood said) ‘Go with your love, not want,’ so I felt like that was a spot,” Ginnis said. “Me and coach Hood felt like that was a great spot for my situation. And I'm just happy to be in a situation where I'm the first in my family to break the curse and go to college and play sports. I'm just happy to see what the future holds.”
Hood coaches the second national team at AZ Compass Prep in Chandler, where the first team often is ranked among the top 10 in the nation for independents. Before taking on the role in 2021, Hood was an assistant coach at South Mountain High School for four years.
In addition to coaching at AZ Compass Prep, Hood has stayed connected to south Phoenix, where he coaches three AAU teams funded primarily through community and parent contributions. The program is called team RHJ, named after his nephew, Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, who played for the Brooklyn Nets before going overseas to compete.
It's not all about basketball for Hood. He wants his players to go to college on scholarship and says he will do everything he can to make that happen.
Through the RHJ program, Hood runs a 15U and 17U team. This season, for the first time, he also coached an “unsigned seniors” team to help players who were affected by the pandemic get college offers.
All of the players on Hood’s 2022 unsigned seniors team will be going to college next year for free. Three seniors accepted full-ride scholarships to play basketball — Ginnis at Howard College, Kameron Bender at Green River College in Auburn, Washington, and Malik Payton at King University in Bristol, Tennessee. Another senior was offered a full-ride basketball scholarship to Los Angeles Trade Technical College.
The team’s fifth player — who joined the team for more recreational purposes, Hood said — will be attending Arizona State University on a full-ride academic scholarship.
Since he started the RHJ program in 2015, 17 of Hood’s players have received full-ride scholarships to Division I and II schools and junior colleges. That's about 85% of his 17U teams, he said.
“At the end of the day, that’s all it’s about. Getting them to school for free,” Hood said. “I don’t care where they go. It don’t matter to me as long as they go somewhere and they don’t have to come out of their pocket to pay.”
Hood said his 17U RHJ players also received plenty of interest from Division I schools this season.
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‘One of the biggest blessings of my life’
Ginnis said he met Hood at a tournament during his eighth grade year. Hood recruited him to play at South Mountain, and Ginnis transferred to AZ Compass after South Mountain nixed winter sports because of COVID-19. Hood took the head coaching job for the second national team at AZ Compass in the same year.
The two developed a close personal relationship. Ginnis said Hood cares about each of his players. Ginnis and other players spent a lot of time with Hood off the court watching movies and basketball games.
Malik Payton, who has played with RHJ for the past two seasons, received a full-ride scholarship to King University earlier this year after a Marquee Hoops tournament in California.
Payton was originally part of the 2021 graduating class, but he didn’t receive the opportunities he wanted because of COVID-19’s effect on recruiting. He took a year of post-grad classes and reclassified to the class of 2022.
Payton attended Florence High School, where his father is the varsity basketball team's assistant coach. "Not a lot of coaches are going to come out and watch Florence play," Jerome Payton, Malik's father, said.
“Once I started playing with coach Hood, my recruiting process went through the roof,” Malik Payton said. “From NAIA all the way up to D1s, everybody was hitting me, they were all texting me. So many different coaches coming to talk to me just because of the connections Hood had for me, and that he allowed.”
During the 2021 season, the RHJ teams played in Las Vegas Big Time, an NCAA-certified tournament.
“I’ve never played in anything like that before,” Malik Payton said. “The amount of coaches that were there to watch all of us, just that opportunity that he’s been giving all of us.
"We were playing against guys like Dior Johnson, we were playing against a dude who just got drafted, Shaedon Sharpe. It was just a lot of big names, a lot of talent over there,” he said.
Once he gets to Texas, Ginnis plans to major in communications. He was inspired by an experience at a tournament this past season in El Paso, Texas, where he found his voice as a leader on the AZ Compass team, energizing and encouraging his teammates before an early morning game. He’s always been a leader, he said, but he was leading by example instead of vocally.
“That changed my life, just me opening my mouth and just me being more vocal,” he said. “I’ll be at a park and just see a little kid playing, and I’ll tell him, ‘Shoot like this.’ I just always give positive vibes toward a little kid, like ‘You can make it.’ That’s why I’m going to school for communication.”
His dream, he said, is to get paid to play basketball full time, whether that means playing for the NBA or traveling overseas. But he also wants to build his own youth center by Eastlake Park in Phoenix, where he grew up.
He hopes to be able to guide and encourage the kids in his neighborhood who look up to him. The center would be “for the kids that had trauma growing up like me,” Ginnis said. “I want to tell the kids, it’s OK, that stuff happens. Just stay positive, stay steadfast, just believe in yourself, don’t ever lose confidence in yourself.”
He imagines “L.J.’s Youth Center” as a place for kids to be able to open up and have fun. “It’s a place where they can come and they know it’s like, OK, I can relieve some pain here. I can open up to anyone in this facility.”
Ginnis couldn’t play with the RHJ teams this summer because he committed to Howard in May. But he still took a leadership role within the AAU programs, helping out Hood with coaching and other leadership opportunities.
For Malik Payton, the opportunities he received from playing with Hood changed his life.
“This full ride truthfully has been one of the biggest blessings of my life,” he said. “I know personally, my family, we’re not the most financially stable family. So being able to know that I could go to college, and my dad and my mom, they don’t have anything to pay for it, was one of the biggest dreams.
“I always knew growing up there was a good chance that I wasn’t gonna make it to college just ‘cause of those stats,” he said. “(Coach Hood) being able to really put my name out there, for King to give me that opportunity, it’s been a huge blessing for me.”
Payton is considering studying sports management or communications once he gets to Tennessee.
“I’m definitely excited to get my degree,” he said.
He hopes he’ll eventually be able to play professionally overseas.
'He was constantly reaching out to coaches'
In addition to getting his players to big-name tournaments, Hood worked around the clock to give them as many opportunities as possible, promoting their successes to college coaches and on Twitter to get them national exposure.
“He was constantly reaching out to coaches,” Malik Payton said. “He would always tell me, ‘This coach might text you, I’ve been talking to them, they really like you, they like what they see.’ He set up a couple workouts with some jucos for me just to really be able to get my name out there.”
For Ginnis, Hood paid to have professional videos made of his highlights. This was especially crucial during summer 2020, when the RHJ teams were unable to compete due to COVID-19 and high school players had fewer opportunities to get in front of college coaches.
“It just really brought us to tears a little bit,” Ginnis said. “We didn’t play no games that whole summer with COVID, and it messed up a lot of people’s recruiting because it was seniors going on to having nothing. But coach Hood always pulled something, pulled some film out on them, pushed them publicly and made something happen.”
Hood said, “I did a lot for him, as far as paying for people to cut up videos and make highlights and send them to colleges. Every time he would play, I would reach out to a video guy, and they’ll charge $150, $250 just for a little two-minute clip. But that’s my guy. It paid off.
“It’s a 24-hour, 365-day type of deal,” Hood said. “It never stops. I don’t mind.”
‘It ain’t cheap’: Funding a $50,000-plus season
This past season totaled more than $50,000 to fund all three RHJ teams. They were funded through a combination of contributions from parents of the players, out-of-pocket contributions from Hood and community member Dana Burns, and donations and a couple of small grants through the team's fiscal sponsor, A Permanent Voice Foundation, which is run by Burns.
Thunderbirds Charities gave the AAU program $1,500, and the Arizona Center for African American Children donated a $2,500 grant for expenses.
“It’s a challenge to try to get these people to buy into the vision,” said Burns, who helps the program with funding and travel. “It’s huge, if you think about it, what he’s doing with these kids. I have friends and relatives who support and donate, so that’s the bulk of it as well.”
The cost of entering events can range from $350 to around $750 per team for NCAA Live Period tournaments, Hood said. The NCAA tournaments are crucial opportunities for high school players to be recruited by college coaches. In addition to entry fees, expenses for these tournaments include bus transportation, lodging and food for the road.
This past season, RHJ teams went to tournaments including NCAA-Certified Las Vegas Big Time and the Prep Hoops Circuit and Marquee Hoops Circuit, two of the top independent AAU tournaments in the country.
“It took a lot for us to get there,” Hood said. “Of course, when you do this stuff, it ain’t cheap. But we figured out a way and we got it done. I would say it was a huge success with getting all of our guys to school for free.”
The AAU season ended in late July, and Burns is already thinking about funding for 2023. She set a goal of raising $150,000 during the AAU offseason to set the program up for multiple years.
Burns wants this funding to allow the team to bring back graduated players, including Ginnis and Payton, to coach and help out during their breaks.
Burns said the AAU team has been restricted to tournaments within driving range because flights for all of the players were too expensive. With sufficient funds, Burns and Hood hope to have the chance to play in the best tournaments around the country, regardless of distance.
“Play in Prep Hoops events, play in Marquee Hoops events, try and get them out to Vegas, Cali, maybe take a trip back east, and try and get the boys in college,” Hood said of his program’s plan for 2023. “Try to help them become better people through the game of basketball. It’s the same thing every year.”
Individuals interested in contributing to the RHJ program can donate through A Permanent Voice Foundation via its website at www.permanentvoice.org, or contact Burns at contact@permanentvoice.org.
Chloe Peterson is a Pulliam Fellow covering sports. Reach her at chloe.peterson@arizonarepublic.com and follow her on Twitter @chloepeterson67.
Madeleine Parrish covers equity issues for The Arizona Republic. Reach her at madeleine.parrish@gannett.com and follow her on Twitter @maddieparrish61.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: How Coach Erik Hood creates college opportunities for Phoenix players
