About Us

The mid-Michigan Lakers Basketball club was founded in the winter of 2007. The goal of the club's directors is, and always will be, to provide opportunities for student-athletes in mid-Michigan to showcase their talents and to aid them in the acquisition of college scholarships. The Mid-Michigan Lakers basketball club is a not-for-profit organization.

· The Lakers’ basketball club began in the spring of 2007. For the past two seasons we have supported two teams--one U-17 and one U-16.

· The club will be directed by Jared Field (media and marketing), Chris Matheson (fund raising), Jim Pope (coach), Marcellus Miller (coach) and Gavin Raath (administration).

· Our philosophy is simple: We want to aid student-athletes in the acquisition of college scholarships. In so doing, it is our goal for players to leave the club with better skills than what they brought with them. In a nutshell, getting better and getting noticed is what we are all about.

· Additionally, as a club we want to be service-oriented. With that in mind, players should be prepared to take part in one service project per month in June, July and August.

· Practices will be held once a week at the Cage. More information on practice times and days will be forthcoming. For players who are involved in spring sports, we are dedicated to working around schedules.

· Our goal is to compete in 7-8 events over the course of the spring and summer. If we have the funding to do more, we will do more.

· One further goal of the club is to keep costs as low as possible. Since this is a not-for-profit club, we can charge parents less than the average summer squad. The going-rate is $500 and we think that’s too much. $400 will be required to cover uniforms, AAU registrations and tournament fees. Anything further will be covered by donations and sponsors. Checks should be made out to the “Mid-Michigan Lakers.” If the $400 is an issue, please contact one of the directors and hopefully we can work something out.

· A special thank you is owed to the owners of the Cage—Larry Weber and Stephen Rivette—who have graciously donated court time for tryouts and practices.

A native of Flint, Jared is a 1998 graduate of Flint Carman-Ainsworth High School. He is also a graduate of the University of Michigan-Flint with a BA in Political Science and a master's degree in Social Science. Currently, Jared is a staff writer in the sports department at the Flint Journal and the editor of Great Lakes Hoops, a web-based prep basketball magazine in mid-Michigan. You can read his Mlive basketball blog at: http://blog.mlive.com/flintjournal/hotbedhoops/

Jim, southern by birth and northern by the grace of God, has lived in Michigan for nearly a decade. He has served as a high school and young adult pastor as well as in many other student-oriented capacities. Jim has previous coaching experience on the AAU circuit in West Texas. Jim will be the head coach of the U-16 Lakers. He will be assisted by Andrew Bolton.

Marcellus was born and bred in Flint and is proud of that fact. He received his K-12 education through the Flint school system at Doyle-Ryder Elementary School, Longfellow Middle School and Flint Central High School. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in 2004 from the University of Michigan-Flint. He has coached youth basketball in Flint since the age of 14, in addition to participating in various adult basketball leagues--including several years in the Flint City Pro-Am.

Matheson played varsity ball at Flint Kearsley for Coach Jim Vanitvelt in the late 1980s. After a less-than-stellar academic career in high school he had a stint on the basketball team at Kansas Wesleyan University--a short one. "I came home quickly," said Matheson. "I managed to avoid any serious trouble before I finally got my act together and enrolled in college in Flint."

Matheson got into coaching after being asked to be an assistant on an AAU team by Rich McClavish. Matheson has since graduated from the University of Michigan-Flint in 1997 and the University of Alabama with a Master's degree in History.

Upon returning home in 1999, Matheson began working at Flint's International Academy in September of 1999 and quickly became the coach of their fledgling basketball program.

Matheson throws a wrench in the conventional wisdom of what a player's coach looks like.

"I am so tough on (my players) because I know firsthand what can happen when coaches are not involved in their players’ lives. I was not a good kid and many people at my school knew that, but only a handful ever tried to talk to me about the decisions I was making at that time."

Coaching basketball is more than a job for Matheson, it's a major part of his life.

"It really upsets my fiancée, but I try to be available to my guys at nearly all times. I want to be one of the first to know if there is a problem so we can get out ahead of it and not let it roll over us. When I was in high school I used to prop open doors at Kearsley and other schools in order to get gym time; since I have been (at IAF) I have tried to keep the school, not just the gym, open as often as possible in order to keep these kids out of potentially bad situations."