VABA Team

Ben D'Alessandro

Executive Director, Director of Coaching

Ashley Burney

Director of Girls Basketball

Ernest Chambers

Director of Officials

Dominic Morra

Director, Northern Virginia

Consistency

“My goal in sailing isn't to be brilliant or flashy in individual races,
just to be consistent over the long run.” -Dennis Conner

It is extremely important that we, as coaches, are consistent with our message and our methods. While all of our instructors come from diverse experiences, educations and backgrounds, we have the same foundation and believe in the same set of ideals regarding both basketball and life.

Jeff House

Instructional Consultant

VABA Team

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The Virginia Basketball Academy prides itself not only in developing young athletes, but also in providing top-notch training for coaches. Each Virginia Basketball Academy staff member is a product of the detailed training regimen of the unique, comprehensive Virginia Basketball Academy teaching curriculum. We desire for our students (and their parents) to trust that they are receiving the highest quality instruction from the most trustworthy teachers and that our collective efforts will result in the most efficient level of overall development.

*If you are interested in joining our staff or attending any of our coaching clinics, please email us at info@PlayVABA.org.

TRUSTWORTHY
Character + Competency + Consistency

Character

“No spoken word, nor written plea, Can teach our youth what they should be.
Nor all the books on all the shelves, It’s what the teachers are themselves.”

The most essential ingredient in our coaching staff is character. If our staff is expected to carry our our character development mission, they must all be individuals of integrity, honesty and sound moral condition. Each must be a role model in our community.

We are proud to have coaches that represent this ideal. Each of our staff members understands how vitally important their role in a young person’s life can be and takes seriously the privilege of being in a position of leadership.

Competency

“Would you trust a surgeon to perform a critical operation who is honest,
but who has not kept up on advances in his field and is professionally obsolete.” -Steven Covey, “Principle-Centered Leadership”

Another quality of our coaches that we pride ourselves in is competency. It is essential that we are competent in our subject matter. However, knowing the subject matter is not enough; in order for us to successfully carry out the objective of improving the skill level of our students in an effective manner, it is equally important that our coaches understand how to teach the subject matter. The ability or the experience of playing the game is secondary to the knowledge of and the ability and training to transfer that knowledge in an organized, systemic, incremental and effective way.

All of our coaches have been thoroughly trained in our basketball curriculum. Each is consistently evaluated and re-evaluated in a way to ensure that our students are taught the game in a way that they can easily understand and apply in a game situation. Therefore, because we work so hard to train our coaches and provide as much experience for them as they continue to develop their trade, we are confident that we are providing premium quality basketball instruction to our students.

We are committed to teaching the game to be played “the right way” - and we pride ourselves in being consistent with what we teach, and how we execute our curriculum. This prevents any confusion from the student and provides a level of continuity that lends itself to real improvement over time.

If we are to expect our methods to produce consistent, skilled players, we must also be consistent in the material we teach and the way in which we teach it. Not only do we teach the fundamentals, but we do so in a fundamentally sound and consistent way. We want our students to develop a sense of confidence in their abilities and trust that what they are learning will produce positive results on the court and off. We are very proud of the impact we have made on the students in our program.