St. Louis Independent Boy's basketball teams - Confluence and Lift for Life Academies

 Check out all my conferences HERE


While I have been focused on boys' basketball conferences, there are some independent schools in St. Louis that need some analysis.  Today's analysis looks at two very good charter schools in the downtown area, Confluence Preparatory Academy, a couple of blocks north of St. Louis City Hall, and Lift for Life Academy Charter on Broadway just south of Busch Stadium.  

Both schools have great boys basketball programs and Lift for Life has an equally good girls program.  Brian Karvinen has been coaching Confluence since about 2016 and is an intense but caring coach who lives and dies with his players.  For some of these city kids, Brian is not only a head coach, but sometimes a father figure, counselor, chauffeur, dietician, clothier, and life coach.  Before Karvinen joined the staff at Confluence, not too many people even knew that Confluence had a boy's basketball team.  Brian has put them on the map.

Brian does not get the best players in St. Louis.  A lot of great players opt for Vashon, as St. Louis City middle-schoolers can pick any public or charter school in the city.  Brian gets some great players too but not the D-1 potential players that the Wolverines get.  And he can't get the transfers from Suburban North schools that Vashon gets.  But even then, Brian does a great job of pulling together excellent teams, and this year's team will be no exception.



The other independent team I wanted to highlight is Lift for Life Academy who looked dead in the water in the middle of January last year but came on strong to win their class three district and take on highly rated and eventual class three state champion Hartsville and a very good, eventual third-place team in Summit Christian Academy.  Neither of those games was close but it gave the returnees a taste of the big time and they are anxious to get back for another shot.

The girls team went on a similar tear, finishing with eight straight victories and their first state championship.  I wrote about their journey last spring.  The boy's almost made a dual championship but couldn't quite get past the mighty Hartsville squad.

The boy's team has had the St. Louis Blazers as a feeder team to Lift for Life for the past few years and has an outstanding coaching staff starting with head coach Torrey Davie, assistant Lamont Lane, JV coach Dan Stamborski, assistant JV and frosh coach, Jose Jackson, and freshman coach Harold Graves.  It will be interesting to see how far both the boy's and girl's teams go this winter.  Is a dual state championship around the corner? 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gramps Braggin' Rights Missouri Boy's Class Four Basketball Ratings by District - 2/10/2021

Image
 Gramps Braggin' Rights Missouri Boy's Class Four Basketball Ratings by District - 2/10/2021 As I stated earlier, I am not fully caught up on all teams in all classes but with district seeding meetings (some have already occurred) and tournaments right around the corner, I am posting what I have.  Here are the Class Four boys ratings by district and my comments about each district: District 1: Take New Madrid County Central over Cape Notre Dame and run. District 2:  Jobe Bryant and the Park Hill Central Rebels dominate. District 3:  St. James edges Owensville District 4: Confluence Academy spoils another Cinderella run by Lift for Life. District 5: How do you spell Domination...?  V-A-S-H-O-N District 6: MICDS and Whitfield could play three OTs to decide this.  I can't, you can flip your own coin.  Brandon Mitchell-Day might be the difference-maker here. District 7: St. Charles West, Orchard Farm, and Lutheran St. Charles battle for the title.  I ...
Read more

West County Leadwood and Steelville - an analysis of schedules and explanation of comparative statistics

Image
Sometimes I think I need thicker skin.  When you get into a rating of teams, the old saying from Lincoln "you can satisfy some of the people all of the time, but you cannot satisfy all of the people all of the time" or something like that.  No matter how hard I try to keep the ratings equitable, there will be a complaint, an inquiry, or a question about their team's placement. I had an inquiry this morning about class three Steelville and West County Leadwood.  The inquirer indicated that West County had made the final four and had beaten Steelville in a February game by 47-37.  I don't always respond to such questions with this much analysis but it does two things: 1) it validates my ratings and 2) it helps explain to everyone how I get to where the ratings end up. I told the inquirer that I would take a look but she said it did not matter because head-to-head should trump everything else.  I don't agree with that unless it is a state championship game (besides...
Read more

Upsets, Upsets, Upsets and some bad calls 3/06/2022

Image
 Wow!  It must be March and the madness has already begun with upset, after upset, after upset.  Teams that ranked high in Gramps Braggin Rights ratings are dropping off the board left and right.  It makes you wonder if the MSHSAA play-off system needs to be revised so that the best basketball is not played in the District semi-final or final game but rather in the final four? There were some very controversial games too.  I do not have the details, but KC Center lost to Pembroke Hill because of a technical call because a fan ran over the Pembroke Hill bench after Center scored an apparent winning basket with 1.4 seconds left.  One of the Pembroke players actually tried to grab the driving Center player but there was no call.  When I first looked at the video, I thought the official was calling an intentional foul on the Pembroke player which would have waived off the basket, and given Center two free throws and the ball. And that ref did call a techni...
Read more