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SoCalHoops High School News

New ARC All-Star & Traveling
Team Evaluation Leagues--(March 4, 1999)

Not to be outdone this Spring by some of the other leagues, and in order to put together one or more competitive summer travel teams, ARC (American Roundball) will for the first time hold a free spring evaluation league at two locations, one at North Hollywood High School and the other at Long Beach State. Evaluations will take place March 21 at each site. The league will feature four teams of 10 players (a total of 40 players) and there will be a boys' league and a girls' league.

At each site, 40 of the top players will be selected to participate in the four week long league. Again, participation will be free. That's right, free. As in no fee. Upon completion of the league, the top players will be selected to participate on summer traveling teams with ARC. ARC usually fields teams for tournaments in the spring up in the Bay Area, and in New York and Las Vegas during the summer.

Yesterday we spoke with Rich Goldberg about the "new" league, and he told us that it will be in addition to the regular ARC leagues which ARC will continue to run at Oak Park High School, Pierce College and North Hollywood and Poly High Schools in the San Fernando Valley; those teams will continue to practice on Saturdays and play their "league" games on Sundays. But this is a new concept for ARC: "The purpose of the new elite high school league is to give ARC a new platform to evaluate the best and most talented players for our summer high school traveling teams," Goldberg told us. "We're counting on high school coaches to nominate their most talented players, and we've already received some great names."

Traditionally, ARC has fielded one or two teams for the Slam-N-Jam NIT in late July, but hasn't entered a team at the adidas Big Time Tournament or the Double Pump Best of Summer, preferring instead to concentrate on some of their younger travel teams during July, and instead has entered the smaller Vegas tourneys which follow after the Big Time. Apparently ARC will ( depending upon how competitive a team they can put together) change that this year. According to Goldberg, ARC will look to put together one, and possibly two high school teams to participate in some of the high profile events, in addition to the Bay Area and New York events that ARC is now affiliated with.

Given the historical ties to the San Fernando Valley and the Pasadena area, we'd expect to see a strong contingent of players coming out for these teams, and we'd also expect to see a pretty strong group in the Long Beach area as well. As for coaching, we aren't certain about this, but we'd be willing to bet that Rob Ichart will be coaching at least one of the teams, and possibly Rob Bloom of North Hollywood. Ichart, who is now an assistant at Moorpark High under Tim Bednar, also runs private group workouts for guards on Saturdays or Sundays, usually at Poly High School, and these are some of the toughest and most intense workouts we've ever seen. Past participants have included Gilbert Arenas (Grant, Arizona), Casey Jacobsen (Glendora, Stanford), Sean Corkery (Moorpark High), David Gale (Buckley), Ruben Sanchez (Chaminade) , Todd Tomlinson (Moorpark), Matt Llewellyn (Loyola), Kent Dennis (Cleveland), Cody Pearson (Notre Dame), and many others.

The tryouts for the leagues will be scheduled as follows:

North Hollywood High School, Sunday March 21--12:00 Noon (Boys) and 1:00 p.m. (Girls)

Cal State Long Beach (East Gym), Sunday, March 21--5:00 p.m. (Boys) and 6:00 p.m. (Girls)

If you need further information about the new league, call ARC at (818) 995-3761 or e-mail hoopstars@archoops.com

Of course, the rest of the ARC spring schedule will still remain in place, and that includes boys and girls leagues for all ages. You can get more information about the regular leagues as well at the above phone number and e-mail address or you can visit their website at this link.