GCAA Hoopsters

Congratulations on making a 2012-2013 GCAA travel basketball team. A try out was held Tuesday September 25th and 3 independent evaluators rated each child on drills and their performance in a scrimmage format. The evaluators were 3 current AAU basketball coaches. No evaluator had a child in the grade or in the Garden City schools. Try outs are not an exact science but we do try to be as transparent and equitable as possible with an independent evaluation formula. Utilizing this approach, the ratings were compiled for each child and those rankings were used to form the team below. This approach typically results in movement from one team to another and this year was no exception. We truly wish we could place every player attending the try out on a travel team but the numbers at this grade plus our limited court time we have made it difficult to do so. For a child not making a team, we GCAA has a very strong intramural program and we would encourage you to further your basketball skills thru our GCAA intramural competition as well as in town CYO programs.

A cornerstone of GCAA Basketball is our intramural program and your travel fee includes intramural registration. Unlike younger grades, there is not a requirement for boys 7th grade and 8th grade to play intramurals, given typical middle school obligations. However, your participation is strongly encouraged in this fun filled, somewhat informal program. We will do our best to ensure there are no conflicts with GCAA travel basketball and we will do our best to ensure minimal conflicts with in town CYO programs. GCAA intramurals for 7-8 boys will more than likely be held on Saturday afternoons in December at Garden City Middle School and the program will move to Friday nights starting in January also at the Garden City Middle School, subject to court time allocations. Our strong intramural program allows GCAA to access additional court time for practice and permits players to get out on a court one additional time per week since practice time is limited given the size of our program. Please note GCAA has negotiated a group discount with Island Garden in exchange for paying our registration fee early. Each coach will be collecting the $375 travel fee (this fee includes intramural registration but you do need to fill out separate intramural application as soon as possible if you have not done so already) and we would ask your help in paying this full registration fee by no later than Friday October 5th if you have not paid the fee already.

Thank you for your continued support of GCAA Basketball.

The 8th Grade GCAA travel team is as follows:



Coach Iraj?s Team

Nour Bendary
Brandon Brugnone
Brendan Burke
Sal Cirasola
Christopher Ciurcina
John Cooke
James Drogalis
Jay Iraj
Jack Mahland
Billy Rousakis
Charlie Schmitt
James Walczyk