While soccer has been getting plenty of attention during the World Cup, basketball is still on the rise.
It’s the world’s second-most popular sport, and a South Florida student-athlete academy is taking a “holistic” approach by teaching young people that success on the court goes hand in hand with reading, life skills and character-building.
NBA skills trainer Brian Macon, who locals call B-Mac, runs a 6,200-square-foot indoor facility featuring NBA-quality training and homeschool education.
The former Boynton Beach High school and Boston University player founded GEM, an acronym for "growth, effort and mastery,” he told WLRN.
The academy's name represents a much deeper framework than just basketball.
“We're big on taking kids through the process of them coming here and putting pressure on them just like you put pressure on a diamond,” he said. “And then try to turn them into gems.”
For long-term basketball success, parents are willing to pay big bucks for tailored academies. The entry point to youth basketball has become pricier in recent years and elite hoopers are leaving traditional classrooms behind.
The elite basketball academy, located at the West Atlantic Business Plaza in Delray, serves a range of athletes, from four-year-olds to NBA stars like the Toronto Raptors’ Scottie Barnes whom Macon has trained since age 12.
It’s been operating in Delray Beach since 2024, and has already served over 750 South Florida families, and helped more than 40 athletes advance to the college or pro levels, the organization said.
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It offers tiered training programs, scholarships to under-resourced athletes, and even a full-time homeschool program with an annual price tag of up to $18,000. GEM also accepts Florida's Step Up Scholarship (state-funded school choice vouchers) to help offset costs.
National youth sports participation is rising — but declining for the lowest-income households, according to data from the federal government’s National Survey of Children’s Health and the Sports & Fitness Industry Association.
While training pros is highly specialized, Macon said teaching youth from various cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds requires a holistic approach: “Fundamentals, mental toughness and teamwork,” he said.
“Sometimes you're gonna be the star, sometimes you're gonna be the guy who has to take out the garbage and do the dirty work,” Macon added. “So if we can teach kids early on how to play those different roles then we'll have better humans.”
Hiring licensed public teacher in a basketball academy
To create a true alternative to traditional schooling, Macon recruited Simone Russell, a licensed veteran teacher who spent over a decade in traditional public and charter systems.
Russell notes that the all-boys academic pod allows them to drop the defensive machismo often seen in traditional classrooms.
They follow strict no-phone policies, social etiquette training, mandatory silent reading, art and life lessons.
“In a gender-exclusive setting, what I've noticed is that they actually are more open,” said Russell, who's also the author of the children's culture guide Jamaica in Every Letter.
She said the all-boys academy has taken down “that kind of guarded energy that they have in the traditional schooling, and they're just allowed to show up as themselves and explore.”
Russell, whose family comes from a professional tennis background, said student-athletes operate on a non-traditional homeschool schedule, utilizing online platforms like Florida Virtual School (FLVS).
Their academic calendar follows the Palm Beach County schedule, running from just before Labor Day to mid-May.
At GEM, the former Broward County teacher acts as the on-site lead educator and facilitator. She said a lack of funding and time often prevented her from being more creative with each student in the traditional classroom setting.
“ I am a teacher and I know how we're tied down with pacing guides and the curriculum and state testing deadlines and all of these things, but there were some things that were falling through the cracks,” she said.
“Simple things like field trips and etiquette and hygiene lessons and real time to actually do arts and crafts and get hands-on and work those fine motor skills.”
Broward County this year cut nearly a thousand support staff positions after facing a $90-million deficit and losing 50,000 students over 10 years.
Russel said at the G.E.M, her “creative avenue” didn’t just save her students from the rigid, testing-heavy constraints of the traditional school system, it saved her career amid a wave of teacher burnout in Broward.
Teachers ended up carrying the emotional load, she said. That all changed for her at GEM. She said a lot of her peers are looking for alternative education options.
“I'm still in touch with children. I'm still impacting their lives. I'm still imparting knowledge,” she said. "It allowed for me to see that my skill set is still valuable, even in a nontraditional setting. And with a little bit of creativity, there is a place for teachers in society."
