The Factory Hoops Academy Summer Camps

August 25, 2025/nicole

2011 Camp Flier

…Where Players Are Made

part 2 of 10

Starting something from scratch can be a daunting task. Often, there are no blueprints to follow, no boss telling you how to get it done. Just ideas and determination. The key is showing enough grit to keep pushing to find a way…and then have enough juice left to keep it going.

In 2011 DéRonté and I set out to host basketball summer camps. We would set aside a few weeks and commit to them. But where do we begin? Well, “where” is actually the key. At the time, I was preaching full-time and also working a landscaping job with a startup company called Country Lawn Care or CLC Lawns. I think I was actually their first employee. Country Lawn Care would eventually cut the holes in our concrete slab in Lewes so we could place our basketball goals…but that is a story for another day.

Having been working in youth sports most of my life and as the former Sport Director of the Sussex Family YMCA, I knew a little bit about what was necessary to rent gyms in the area. And once we landed on the Cape Henlopen School district, namely, the Lewes School on Savannah Road, that set in motion several other important tasks that were prerequisites to us doing what we really wanted to do – coaching.

“You must provide us with a certificate of insurance”

What is that? And how do we obtain it? Answers to that question led us to the bigger task – forming a business. LLC? 501 (c) (3)? Corporation? S-Corporation? This is where grit was required. Keep pushing through and solving problems until you get it done. In our house we have a saying,

“You do what you HAVE TO do, so you can do what you WANT TO do!”

So, we formed an LLC and landed on the name “The Factory Hoops Academy” with the tagline, “…where players are made.” The Hoops Academy portion was important to DéRonté because he knew we wanted us to be known for teaching the game. We want to educate and inspire athletes to play the game together, and with passion and with purpose. The Factory portion of the name came from me as I’ve always envisioned this concept of manufacturing athletes or players. They come to us as raw material and we mold them and form them into players. Some factories produce cogs for machine, plastic cups, or even automobiles. We produce “players.” That was the vision. And here was our mission statement:

“The Factory Hoops Academy exists to produce, inspire and educate basketball players, thus equipping them to compete with passion and creativity.”

Ryan Thornburg, Player and Coach

Little ballers now high school seniors C/O 2026. Zion Squires, Jameson Tingle, Amalia Fruchtman all expected to receive scholarships.

With our company formed and our COI in hand we secured the Lewes School and began promoting our basketball camps to…anyone that would see it on Facebook and the Cape Gazette. We held four camps that first summer. We learned a lot. We learned that running a full day summer basketball camp like a high school practice or training session was too much. Meaning, starting with conditioning and defense might just wear them out for the rest of the week. We learned to slow down to teach and correct. We invited guest speakers like former college and NBA coaches to speak during lunch time. We really got after it and got better.

In the summers 2012 and 2013 we moved to Beacon Middle School thanks to them having air conditioning! Stations, competitions, games; summer camps have been a hallmark for Factory Sports. Older players decided to stick around following weeks to help with the younger kids as well. Those camps were a lot of fun and set the stage for opening our own facility in 2014.

Little ballers like Zion Squires, Jameson Tingle and Amalia Fruchtman all expect to receive athletic scholarships upon graduation in 2026

We are very grateful to those friends and families and lovers of basketball that trusted us that first year especially and helped us spread the word for years two and three. Many of those young athletes went on to play for me in high school and some in college and one was drafted into the MLB a few years back. It has been so enjoyable to be a small part of their journey and to watch them grow as people and as athletes.

Some Notable Alumni from those early years:

Ian Robertson, Randolph-Macon College National Champion. Jake Gelof, Los Angeles Dodgers Draft Pick. Logan Shuttleworth, West Chester University Volleyball. Cailey Thornburg, Mercer University Lacrosse. Madison MacElrevey, Otterbein University Track and Field. Riley Shields, Alvernia University Softball. Sydney Pedersen, Mississippi University for Women Basketball. Jack Ashby, Lynchburg University Soccer.

While the summer basketball camps were an awesome kick start to our business we realized it was difficult constantly relying on finding places to host the camps. Anyone in this stage of their business knows how difficult it can be. Schools in particular often forget that someone is renting their space or it was never communicated to the custodians. And they always prioritize their own activities, and rightly so! This was part of the reason why in we sought to open a dedicated space – a place to call home.