New Northeast Renegades team travels to Virginia
Coach Mike Holmes, Carder Chatey (middle) and assistant Xavier Crofton during a Renegades practice. Photo by Roxanne Pandolfi.
The Northeast Renegades, a newly-formed local basketball organization, sent a team of boys aged 14-and-under to compete in the 2009 Division III Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) Boys Basketball National Tournament at the Boo Williams Sportsplex in Hampton, Virginia this weekend.
The U-14 team qualified to compete as one of 64 teams by their ranking in the Connecticut state championship this spring.
The team faced the Long Island Lightning-Ferguson, the PG Allstars from the Potomac Valley and the U-Turn Warriors from Virginia in pool play that began Thursday.
Standings after the eight pools compete will determine which teams play toward the championship Saturday evening and Sunday.
Local youngsters on the team include Carder Chatey of Ashford as well as Juan “Tito” DeJesus, Kendall Marquez and Luis Vega of Windham.
The Northeast Renegades organized this year to bring opportunity to middle school-aged youngsters in the small towns and cities of Northeast Connecticut to build the fundamentals and provide competitive basketball players at the high school level.
“This corner of Connecticut has some really talented kids,” said Northeast Renegades’ founder and volunteer coach Brent Theriault.
“Our intention with Northeast Renegades is to offer kids the ability to learn real shooting, ball-handling and defensive basics, then apply those skills to their local town travel teams through the winter and compete on our AAU teams in the spring and summer, if they choose,” he said. “I’m really thrilled to take our first AAU team on to national competition.”
The Northeast Renegades fielded boys teams at the U-11, U-14, U-15, U-16 and U-17 levels this season.
Although there were not enough girls to form local teams this year, they were recommended to the East Coast Renegades in Hartford for this start-up season.
Players from throughout the region – including Ashford, Mansfield, Willington, Pomfret, Willimantic, Brooklyn, Danielson, Thompson, Killingly, Chaplin, Tolland and Woodstock – made up this year’s teams.
The teams competed in tournaments in Hartford, Middletown, New Haven, Pawtucket, Rhode Island, Plaistow, New Hampshire and in the Division 2 State Championship Tournament. Several of these teams won championships at these AAU tournaments.
Posted July 25, 2009
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