Recruiting middle-school basketball standouts

Showered with attention,recruiters and shoe companies while looking to strike gold with a future star.
Before daylight arrives most mornings, the percussive thumps of a wiry 14-year-old dribbling a basketball break the silence surrounding Theodore Wirth Park. Riley Dearring, a 6-4, 165-pound eighth-grader, jogs while bouncing a ball through an exclusive neighborhood near Minneapolis' largest park. It's part of a strenuous daily workout, which also includes 300 pushups, 300 situps and 500 squats for the budding basketball standout from Minneapolis. Dearring, who is expected to play for Hopkins' varsity team as a freshman next season, said he believes such a demanding routine is required to keep pace with his peers. "I've got to do something to separate myself from those other guys," said Dearring, an A-student at Hopkins North Junior High School.

The emergence of prep-to-pro studs such as NBA MVP LeBron James drives the obsession with discovering -- and becoming -- basketball's next big thing. It is an obsession that has pushed the search into junior high -- and sometimes younger.

Parents pay big bucks
subscribing to websites for rankings.
College coaches find College coaches find prospects at tournaments for 12-year-olds.-olds. Shoe companies get in the mix by outfitting youth traveling teams, hoping to attach themselves to future stars and the dollars they might produce. Parents pay nearly $500 a year to subscribe to Internet sites that rank their kids as sixth-graders. Seventh-graders accept scholarships. Nicknamed "the Franchise," Dearring has been told by doctors he could grow to 6-9. He already is on the radar of Division I programs, including the Gophers and Iowa State.

And he is ranked nationally in his age group by various websites. Colleges send the youngster letters. Packages stuffed with new clothes, made by the shoe companies that want to sponsor Dearring's AAU team, have popped up in his mailbox without a return address. Strangers offer him gifts, and representatives from elite youth camps e-mail his father daily in hopes of getting Riley to travel to events where players his age get national exposure.