The high school team won’t be sanctioned by the Michigan High School Athletic Association. “They get the specialized academics but still get to focus on what they love to do. “You hear of tennis players or those in ballet doing this,” she said. This program, Ernst said, combines that into a on-site academic/athletic facility that has high-level student athletes focused on basketball. The program is not new to the Ernst family, who started the Eldon Academy several years ago in Petoskey and have long operated camps and instruction facilities in Lansing. Plans call for two teams of 15 basketball players – one a prep school and one a post-graduate school – to live on campus, go through academic classes and, yes, play basketball. They’ve went through various permits and processes and have received a warm welcome. “And, obviously, we want to see their game pick up.”Įrnst said the Aim High Basketball Academy has purchased the building and has begun cleaning and renovating it with the blessing of local officials. We want to see these kids improve their test scores and we want to see them learn how to be a better students. I want the kids just to get better every day they are on the floor and every day they are in the classroom. You teach them that they are competing against the game. “It’s just to help the players become better. “The goal is always the same whenever I’m coaching,” she said. Through it all the family maintained a passion for the sport and commitment to getting kids the training they need to play basketball at higher levels. Her brother, Steve, was a coach, too, with stops at places like Grand Valley State University, Olivet College and Leslie High School. Her father, Jerry, was her high school coach. She was an All-State basketball player at Charlotte High School, where she scored 2,204 points in 90 career games and went on to play at Louisiana State University. Her family has been involved in basketball instruction for decades, dating back to her father’s basketball camps in the early 1970s. Ernst heads up the Aim High Academy which has taken over the Cement City High School building. It’s also the goal for Ernst, her family and team of basketball-addicted instructors. “I want to play college basketball,” Dachenen said. It just allows you to focus on your craft.”ĭachenen’s craft is basketball and Erika Ernst, a Michigan basketball legend who hails from a family of basketball junkies, has a program she sees as a way for him to get to the next level. He lives in a renovated portion of the school, will attend classes starting in a few weeks and, most importantly for him, immerse himself into basketball. One of them is Kerr Dachenen, a teenager from Scotland who arrived in Cement City a month ago to train for a future in basketball. This fall, about 30 young men will move to the tiny village on the Lenawee County-Jackson County border with dreams that will take them well beyond those five highways. There is a sign just outside the Aim High Academy entrance in Cement City that has an arrow directing traffic to US-12, I-94, M-50, US-223 and US-127.
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