Blue-chip education
Schools help top basketball players get noticed, boost their careers
Gold light from the morning sun floods the windows of a historic building where the most talented prep basketball team in Colorado gathers for practice. Back in the early 1970s, the American Basketball Association’s Denver Rockets practiced inside this small brick gymnasium beneath a gorgeous wood cathedral ceiling. Today, in southwest Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood, its once-faded red exterior has a fresh coat of black paint to make large white letters pop at the entrance: DENVER PREP ACADEMY.
The glass front door is open. Step into a gym of modern hoop dreams.
It’s impossible to miss Assane Diop and Baye Fall — lanky, athletic dunkers with shooting range — who grew up in Senegal, moved to Colorado for a better education, and led their respective high schools (Belleview Christian and Lutheran) to state titles this past spring. They have college scholarship offers to become teammates at Auburn, CU, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky and Texas A&M. The list keeps growing.
“From coaches to players, it is the highest level of basketball I’ve seen,” said Diop, a 6-foot-10 forward and the 31st-ranked prospect nationally for the Class of 2023, according to 247Sports. “I feel we belong together. Also, they demand more from me off the court . ... Playing with Baye makes me feel more confident that my back is always covered.”
Yet the next step of their basketball journey comes with inherent risk. Fall and Diop transferred from a traditional high school experience to embrace the newest wave of athlete education to hit Colorado — private schools offering specialized basketball training against elite competition.
The prep school experience is designed to mimic college, with players often living on campus. Class time is scheduled around early-morning practice, afternoon workouts and games played on national circuits to maximize exposure. Long popular on the East Coast, but absent from Colorado before 2019, there are now three emerging in-state programs that offer a CHSAA alternative for boys basketball: Colorado Prep, Denver Prep Academy and Rocky Mountain Sports Academy.
“These kids are very impressionable and want to market themselves in the best way possible,” said Brandon Jenkins, a national college basketball recruiting analyst for 247Sports. “That’s why you have so many examples of kids leaving their local public or private schools, that are governed by state bodies, and going to these schools that
“To be able to travel around with this team is going to be really fun. I want to be seen on a national level.”
Kaleb Mitchell, a 6-foot-10 senior forward who left Fountain-fort Carson High School to join DPA