A Flandreau High School player and a basketball coach had the opportunity this month to travel to Colorado Springs to play against the U.S. national team.
Allan Bertram is the academy manager and basketball coordinator at the Sanford Pentagon’s Power Basketball Academy in Sioux Falls, which he said provides 130 camps and works with 5,000 athletes a year.
Through the academy, around 40 boys and girls basketball teams play competitively across the state.
Around two years ago, Bertram said they started wanting more of a national team to expose their players to the best basketball and as much of the country as they could.
He is now the head coach of the Pentagon 17 & Under national traveling team, whose schedule this summer includes tournaments in Dallas, Milwaukee and Las Vegas.
Earlier this month, the team had the opportunity to scrimmage and play against the U.S. national team, made up of various talented high schoolers from across the country.
The idea came up when Don Showalter, head coach of USA Basketball and coaching friend of Bertram, visited the Pentagon for joint programming between the two organizations.
“The whole discussion got put together about them needing help preparing the team for world championships,” Bertram said.
On what happened to be a free weekend for the Pentagon team, Showalter asked them to come out to the U.S. Olympic training facility in Colorado Springs to scrimmage the U.S. national team.
Bertram and his team went less than a week before the U.S. team would travel to Argentina for the world championships.
He said it was a great opportunity for his players to go up against some of the best in the country, who will likely end up playing in college and even the NBA.
“It was a once in a lifetime experience,” Bertram said. “It’s where the best train. The greatest players who ever played in the game. … Just to experience all that, and you’re playing against the 12 best high school players in the United States.”
The Pentagon national traveling team is made up of boys from across South Dakota, including five from Sioux Falls, two from Aberdeen, one from Chester, one from Sully Buttes and Dylan LeBrun, who will be a senior at Flandreau High School in the fall.
Bertram said he and the other coaches will hand pick players based on their position to establish what they’ll need to make a very well-rounded basketball team.
“The biggest thing with [the national traveling team] is it’s just a great opportunity,” Bertram said. “For a kid like Dylan, who’s grown up in a town like Flandreau, to be able to play basketball throughout the entire country.”
He said while they’re traveling for different tournaments, the team will stop and visit museums and gain exposure to a number of things besides basketball.
With this team, Bertram said they just want to provide the kids with a great opportunity and to make them better people along the way.
“[We want to] give kids in our state the chance to showcase how good they are against some of the best players as country,” Bertram said.
