🏀 Inland Empire Youth Basketball Competition Is On The Rise 🔥
The Inland Empire is an often overlooked hotbed of youth athletic talent. The Inland Empire of Southern California is the lesser known LA metro area county bordering the east of the more well known Los Angeles and Orange Counties. It is an expansive land area that includes both Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. Well known Inland Empire towns include Chino Hills, Riverside, Corona & Rancho Cucamonga. Originally all farm land feeding the Los Angeles area, the Inland Empire now mostly consists of suburban homes full of Los Angeles transplants. Due to its cheaper real estate home prices, many Los Angeles relocated to the Inland Empire to raise families with a much lower cost of living.
Because of it's distance from Los Angeles, and the infamous LA traffic, many media outlets do not travel east to cover some of the athletic talent that exists in the area. However, with just about 4 million residents in the Inland Empire, there is more than enough population to ensure that you have your fair share of talented athletes. Well-known Inland Empire hoopers include Reggie & Cheryl Miller, Kwahi Leonard & Jrue Collison, to only name a few.
Because of this fact, we at PlayMaker partnered with Middle School Phenom to host a youth basketball tournament in Corona, CA at Get It Done Sports Arena to give some of the Inland Area based travel ball squads an opportunity to showcase their abilities on a larger platform.
Youth basketball programs such as Komplex Basketball, Team Dtermined, Luv'd Ones, Cal Supreme, Showtime Basketball, SoCal Ambush and Blackwater Girls Basketball (to only name a few) came out and battled it out in a 50-team tournament that include boys & girls teams. We had the opportunity to witness some really good ball players at the middle school level to give us an idea of who is next up.
Often times these student-athletes do not get the same exposure as some of the Los Angeles or Orange County basketball players, so it's great for the youth athletes to get this type of opportunity. There was some solid ball play orchestrated by solid coaching staffs, helping the student-athletes to further develop their basketball abilities.