80 North Texas Middle Schoolers, Motion-Capture Knees and a Surprise Giant: the Mavericks and Scottish Rite Screen Young Players to Keep Them Out of the Clinic
At the Mavs Academy Combine in Grand Prairie, 80 of North Texas's top middle school players ran jump, speed, agility and balance tests run by Scottish Rite for Children specialists — and went home with individualized injury-prevention plans. Former Maverick Shawn Bradley closed the day.
GRAND PRAIRIE — The most useful thing a young player took home from the Mavs Academy Combine was not a drill. The Dallas Mavericks and Scottish Rite for Children teamed up to screen 80 of North Texas's top middle school basketball players at the annual combine on Saturday, Oct. 17, building each athlete an individualized injury-prevention plan, in a report the Dallas Sports Journal published Friday. Forty boys worked from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and the girls from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. at the International Leadership of Texas Arlington-Grand Prairie High School.
The screening is the point. Athletes completed jump, speed, agility and balance testing led by Scottish Rite sports medicine staff and UT Southwestern medical students, before Mavs Academy staff ran the basketball drills and scrimmages. "We provide the actual combine portion," said Sophia Ulman, Scottish Rite's division director of movement science, describing motion-capture testing that can narrow down, in her words, "to the degree what's happening at the knee, or the hip or the ankle that may lead to an injury." Parents received each athlete's results, including any risks the testing identified. The partnership began in 2017 and set attendance records in its ninth year. "We're pretty passionate about keeping them out of our clinic," said Brandee Schmidt, the hospital's sports medicine outreach program manager.
The day closed with a surprise: former Maverick Shawn Bradley, who talked with the athletes about everything from guarding Shaquille O'Neal to the 2021 bicycle accident that left him paralyzed. His advice, as the report carries it: "If you really wanna improve your game, play against people that are better than you." Mavs Academy director Ronard Patton framed the organization's side of the bargain the same way — every kid there loves the game, and teaching them how to play it, fuel for it and stay healthy playing it is the job. The Mavericks' on-court file continues tonight: Dallas hosts Utah in NBA Cup play, a preview this station published this morning.
