PrimeTime Sports

The Intake Basketball Academy (IBA) is in good hands with Dwanda Rachird and Mike Prejean running the program.

IBA Ballers was founded in 2012 and had the goal of building basketball in the League City area.

“Both of us coach high school ball,” Prejean said. “Dwanda was the head coach at Spring High School and I was one of her assistance. She needed help building basketball in the League City area around Pasadena, so we started there and had some success.”

Having experience in development by making players better, IBA has an upper hand on other organizations with the way basketball should be played on a high school level.

“We have three teams in the Spring, Oak ridge and Woodlands area,” Prejean said. “All of our coaches are high school coaches that do this for a living. Our coaches have experience in running practices in a high school pace starting with the young kids. We work a lot on skill development.”

IBA is a different breed of basketball organization. There is no recruiting involved within a Mike Prejean team.

“We’ve coached some good players over the years,” Prejean said. “We are structured a bit different...We do not recruit players and also none of our kids that we had within the program graduated high school yet.”

The girls’ team has always been the forefront of IBA.

“Sierra Cheatham (pictured right) at Clear Springs is one of our first groups of kids we had,” Prejean said. “These kids we work out year-round but do not  stay in our program usually. There is nothing but positive things to say about players like Hannah Froeschel from Clear Creek, Alex Simmons at Clear Creek, and Sydney Cole at Clear Falls all going to into their junior year.”

These are kids that you will probably hear more about in the next year or two.

“They will turn into really good ball players,” Prejean said. “We are glad to have them come through our program. We try to bring them in as young kids and introduce what high school is going to be like. We have a comprehensive basketball program where teaches kids to adjust to any basketball system.”

Grassroots basketball along the state of Texas has different viewpoints on how the game should be played. For Prejean and his team, coaching is a must and every kid that comes through will get coached.

“Some people just want to play on winning teams but if you want your kid to get better at the end of the summer then this is the place to be,” Prejean said. “Our element is player development and preparing young kids coming since middle school. Next year we will get the kids to compete on that level if they are good enough.”

Still, like most new clubs, IBA has suffered some minor setbacks over the past year.

“This year we lost a couple of coaches from personal things,” Prejean said. “We down sized since. We actually took a step and have three teams but had seven. We have a lot of guys who have potential like Brandon Wilson from Clear Creek.”

“Our mission statement is that we are an organization that stimulate, improve, and develop leadership through sportsmanship,” Prejean said. “And I want to compete showing fundamental skills and solid foundation in life.”

“Long term goals are to help kids get to college to play basketball,” Prejean said. “We want to help kids fulfill their dreams to play on that next level. We serve as a coach development organization.”

For a team that is going through rebuilding pains, the way that Coach Prejean is handling it shows his mental toughness and fight through adversity.

“We have a great organization and there is a lot of good basketball in the Houston area,” Prejean said. “We started off small, then grew and now back to small so we are going through growing pains. In about five years we want one of the better basketball programs in the city.”