Hoosiers Connect, IU’s NIL partner, adding camps with House vs NCAA settlement looming

BLOOMINGTON – Hoosiers Connect, IU Athletics’ official partner NIL collective, is taking Indiana basketball on the road.

Early next year, the collective will begin sponsoring and organizing basketball camps around the state involving current Indiana players, in an effort to use NIL opportunities for athletes to connect more closely with fans further afield of Bloomington.

The first two camps are scheduled for Jan. 3 in Fort Wayne, and Jan. 4 in Lebanon, with more likely to hit the calendar in March and April.

“We’re starting to think through the next evolution of Hoosiers Connect and, pending the (House vs. NCAA) settlement, how we’re going to fit into this new world,” Hoosiers Connect executive director Tyler Harris said. “Through that process, we’ve learned fans love being around those athletes, so we wanted to try to create a new mechanism that allowed for both of those things to happen. …

“We’re going to run basketball camps around the state and allow players to teach and train campers, which is I think going to be super valuable to young kids around the state, and we’ll hire those athletes to promote those camps.”

To assist in that effort, Hoosiers Connect tapped Jordan Basye, who spent several years coaching with Indiana Elite at the grassroots level and also at Bloomington North, as director of athletic experiences. Basye, who also trains players individually, will plan and run the camps with an emphasis on teaching skills and fundamentals.

Normally, such camps can only be run on campus, as program staff are strictly limited in what they can do in terms of on-court basketball work outside team facilities. But particularly in the NIL era, players are not bound by the same limitations. They can both promote and work in camp-type settings, and in this case profit from NIL arrangements as they do.

Their involvement is the guiding principle behind the entire plan. Often, for fans — especially young fans — this kind of access to IU basketball…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/hoosiers-connect-ius-nil-partner-162924496.html

Author : IndyStar | The Indianapolis Star

Publish date : 2024-11-21 16:29:00

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