Impact Elite wins state championship

EAST COUNTY — Amad Brayboy picked up a basketball for the first time four years ago, and he hasn’t stopped dribbling since.

After watching a number of NBA games on TV and seeing all of the attention the sport received, the then 9-year-old started playing pickup games at his apartment complex.

“I saw everyone start to play in the NBA and it grabbed me,” said Amad, now 13 years old. “I wanted to play. It showed me how to move the ball around, set picks and shoot well.”

The Haile Middle School sixth-grader eventually began playing recreational basketball at G.T. Bray. It was there that he met Chase Maasdorf. The two teammates quickly became friends; and when Chase went on to play AAU basketball for the Sarasota Gators, Amad decided to try out as well.

The two spent a year playing for the Gators before moving over to Impact Elite in Sarasota last year. Since then, Amad, Chase and the rest of the Impact Elite sixth-grade basketball team, which comprises 10 fifth- and sixth-graders from Bradenton, Sarasota and Port Charlotte, have posted a perfect 19-0 record and are ranked No. 1 in the nation in the USSSA power ranking for sixth-grade Division II and are also No. 1 in the coach’s poll for Florida USSSA.

“We’re like a family,” said Amad, who is a shooting guard for Impact. “We just love to play with each other. We’ve worked really hard to get this far.”

Teammate Nick Carollo, 12, agreed.

“We’re all friends and we want to get better,” Nick said. “It’s a really fun team. Everyone on the team is fun to be with. It’s just fun.

“Everyone on the team works together as a team,” he said. “We’re all good. There are no individual selves.”

To add to an already incredible season, Impact Elite captured the state championship at the Boys USSSA State Championship June 11-12 in Ft. Lauderdale.

Prior to the tournament, Amad, Chase, Emmanuel Lambright and Curtis Cobb sat together on laptops and mapped out the bracket in its entirety, looking at the various match-ups and seeing which teams could prove to be the biggest challenge.

“They were pumped up,” coach Dayne Maasdorf said. “It was like March Madness in here. These kids just want to win.”

Impact Elite played a pair of pool play games June 11 before advancing to single-elimination play. The team won six straight games, including defeating Vero Beach 61-56 in the semifinals and defeating Boynton Beach 44-40 in the championship game.

Amad was named the tournament MVP and Curtis and Emmanual received all-tournament honors.

With the state championship behind them, Impact Elite will now begin preparing for the USSSA National Championship June 25-26 in Cocoa Beach.

The team trains twice a week at the Impact Elite Basketball Academy in Sarasota; but while the academy trains collegiate and NBA players, the members of Impact Elite’s sixth-grade team are all local kids who came together through their love of basketball.

“We have these kids — this core group — that everyone in their brother wants,” Maasdorf said. “We’re not in Indiana, but in my opinion, I’ve pulled together the best sixth-graders in the area.

“They’re always together and they have so much fun together,” he said. “I feel like they’re an extension of my family.”

Contact Jen Blanco at [email protected].