"We Want The Smoke:" Chattanooga Prep Building For The Future

One after another, 20 (give or take) boys ran baseline to baseline, stopping every so often to throw up a hand to contest an imaginary shot before sprinting forward. In a sport known for high scores and wonderful shotmaking, coach Christoffer Collins started the Chattanooga Preparatory school basketball practice with conditioning and defense.

 

Before that drill, the team had already run for ten minutes around the court, a consequence of one of the players being a few minutes late to practice.

The Sentinels may be the youngest team in Chattanooga, but the coaching staff are set on making sure they aren’t the most immature too.

 

“I want Chattanooga Prep to understand that the way I’m going to build this program is through hard work and discipline,” coach Collins said.  “If they stay committed, then the sky's the limit for them.”

 

An all-boys charter school located in Highland Park, it opened in 2018 with an inaugural sixth-grade class, and has added an additional grade each year. It is a public school, with any student within Hamilton County able to attend.

 

With ninth graders now enrolled in the school, Chattanooga Prep created an all-freshman high school basketball team to compete in Class I-A ball. The administration reached out to Dalewood middle school coach Christoffer Collins to build the program from the ground up, and he accepted the offer despite having opportunities elsewhere.

 

“It’s a startup school, and I was kind of skeptical about leaving where I was,” coach Collins said. “I had offers to coach at the collegiate level and other high schools too. You don’t know how a startup school is going to go, but I wanted a challenge. I was given the wonderful opportunity to come to Chattanooga Prep and change the narrative of charter schools.”

 

As the players ran through a series of highly structured motions, players in grades six through nine were drilled on the fundamentals of the game by a coach known outside of Chattanooga as an elite skills trainer. The man who spends his summers honing the skills of NBA all-stars like Jayson Tatum and Joel Embiid has to take a slightly different approach with teenagers, many of whom he has known since they were in elementary school.

 

“I’ve known coach almost since I was born,” sixth-grader Cadence Collins said, “I love Chris Paul because he’s short and I just want to be like him one day. The older guys push me hard and make me get better. I want to get better at anything, because you can’t stop getting better at anything. You always have to push and work hard every day.”

 

Ninth grader Eli Gaines admires Stephen Curry for what the two-time MVP can do without the ball in his hands. Gaines will have plenty of opportunities to mimic his favorite player against top competition, since Chatt Prep is playing against other varsity squads despite not rostering a single player older than 15.

 

“People will say it’s difficult because of what grade the other players are in, but us Chatt Prep people are looking for everyone to play against,” Gaines said. “We just want to get better and to see how we can improve.”

 

The players take after their coach, who sees the loaded schedule as a source of pride. The Sentinels will play Sale Creek on Monday, and will go against teams like Chattanooga Central in the coming weeks, while the freshman team will also play teams such as East Hamilton in February.

 

“In my words, I want all the smoke. They’ve been playing up and playing older individuals since the team started,” coach Collins said. “So why stop now? I’m confident they’ll be competitive against the 11^th and 12^th graders they’ll be playing. We’re not running from any smoke, we want all of it.”

 

As the team grows on the court, the coaches and administration stress the importance of academics off it. Sports operation and exceptional education assistant Brandie Morgan ran the clock during practice, and during school hours she helps students who need assistance with reading or math in classes.

 

“I think that when the boys come here, they grow a lot,” Ms. Morgan said. “I’ve never seen a school like it. The boys are outspoken and not afraid to answer classes out loud or give speeches in front of the whole school. They’re ready to get the spotlight.”

 

Though many students aren’t fond of a subject like math, Gaines quickly pointed to Josh Leonard’s algebra class as his favorite subject in school and said “I love math. I’ve loved it since I started school and even though it’s challenging and is getting harder as I move up (in grades), it’s going to give me knowledge I need for the future.”

 

The future is bright for the students academically, but the immediate future on the court may be rough in the short-term. Players like Gaines will put up a fight, but there is only so much a ninth grader can do against a more-developed junior or senior. But down the road, players such as eighth grader Derrick Roberson will enter the varsity and the current team members will mature. By then, the Sentinels could develop into a real force.

 

“I have to play big man and shoot sometimes, and when I’m open I’ll shoot it, but when I’m not I’ll take it to the basket. I've gotta switch it up,” Roberson said. “I want to get faster, and I want to get better at scoring one-on-one.”

 

As players such as Roberson improve their basketball skill sets under Collins’ watchful eye, he wants parents to know that basketball is secondary for him. He sees championships in the future, but he also sees something even more important taking place at the school.

 

“I’m not preaching the basketball part to parents who want their kids to come here and play, I’m preaching the academics over here. Chattanooga Prep is giving young men, especially in the urban community, a chance to be successful in the classroom. That’s a winning culture right there.”

 

“It’s about giving back and giving kids in my community an opportunity so that they can write their own stores and be successful. My mission is to finish the opportunity that was created for me.”

 

 

 

 

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