Photo by Keith McCoy.
Bucky McMillan
Mountain Brook High basketball coach Bucky McMillan is beginning an academy to teach skills to Mountain Brook children from second grade up through high school.
Mountain Brook High boys basketball coach Bucky McMillan is offering elementary school boys in the Mountain Brook community a unique chance at being part of his program with the newly minted Buckyball Academy.
In some ways, it’s basically a basketball camp that begins in October and runs through next spring. In reality, though, McMillan said it’s more than that.
“If you’re a second-grader in Mountain Brook or you’re part of the Mountain Brook varsity team, we’re all part of the same team,” said McMillan, a Mountain Brook graduate who is entering his seventh season as the Spartans varsity head coach. “I think that’s what makes it unique. We’ll have a community that from second grade all the way up to 12th grade, we’re all part of one thing. It’s a great thing for our community.”
David Good, a former member of Mike Davis’ staff at UAB and a first-year assistant coach at Mountain Brook, said the idea was an example of McMillan’s “out-of-the-box thinking.”
“He just came up with it and ran with it,” Good said. “We sat there and met and met and met and got all the dates down, made sure they didn’t conflict with other stuff. We printed out that schedule and went with it.”
The result is a program open to Mountain Brook boys from second grade to sixth grade. The tipoff event is the Oct. 25 Green and Gold game that features UAB head coach Jerod Haase as guest speaker. The schedule features several clinics run by McMillan, the varsity coaching staff and varsity players throughout the year, a pair of events surrounding Mountain Brook varsity games and countless chances to interact with the varsity players.
“We’re going to be able to start doing a lot of our stuff all the way down to second grade, in terms of the skills, the drills, even the strategy I use with the high school team,” said McMillan, whose team won state titles in 2013 and 2014 and made the Class 7A championship game last season. “We are going to have these guys at our practices, around our players, hanging out with our players after the game.”
McMillan said one of the best things about the academy is the chance for the youngsters and varsity players to strike up friendships.
“I remember when I was in third or fourth grade that those players at the high school… were LeBron James to me,” McMillan said. “I remember when I got up there, I would walk around and kids would want my autograph, and we didn’t have near the success that we’ve had now. These kids identify more with Mountain Brook players more than star NBA players.”
Cost for the academy is $250 before Oct. 2 and $275 for the next week until the final deadline on Oct. 9. Signup information can be found at buckyballers.com. The academy is open only to Mountain Brook residents, and McMillan said he won’t limit it to a particular number of participants.
