Hoopsfix All-Star Classic coaching conference returns in partnership with BCA

The Hoopsfix All-Star Classic’s offering for coaches returns for the third year, with the announcement of a nine-speaker coaching conference across Saturday May 27th and Sunday May 28th at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre in South London.

With CPD opportunities for coaches continuing to be hard to come by, the Hoopsfix Foundation will provide nine sessions of on court and off court education with nine leading coaches, on the day before and morning of the All-Star showcase.

Limited tickets are available here for purchase now.

With the Basketball Coaches Association of the UK, aiming to relaunch for the second time, and working alongside FIBA and Basketball England, a world-class line up of nine speakers have been secured, headlined by Israeli Arik Shivek, the former head coach of the senior Israeli national basketball team, and Spain’s Luis Guil Torres, an assistant coach with the senior Spanish national team who is a reigning World and European champion.

Joining Shivek and Torres will be Bristol Flyers Head Coach Andreas Kapoulas, fresh off a top three BBL Championship finish, Baltic Stars’ Jordanas Mejeras, London Lions’ and renowned skills coach Gary Maitland.

Additionally, Leicester Riders’ Krumesh Patel – the first British-Asian coach to win a professional title, Sussex University’s Rob Newson, West Ham’s Head of Performance & Well-being Jenny Coady, plus MVMT Sport’s Co-Founder Simon Turner will all be speaking.

The event will tip off at midday on Saturday 27th May with six speakers on the show court, before moving to workshops off-court on the Sunday morning. There will be light refreshments provided along with opportunities for networking, with the schedule as follows:

Saturday 27th May
12pm – Welcome
12:15pm – Jordanas Mejeras (Baltic Stars) – Under-12 practice ideas (1 hour)
1:15pm – Krumesh Patel (Leicester Riders – Jump switching defense (45 minutes)
2:00pm – Break (30 minutes)
2:30pm – Gary Maitland (London Lions) – Modern day skill development (45 minutes)
3:15pm – Andreas Kapoulas (Bristol Flyers) – Evolution of coaching at the Bristol Flyers (1 hour)
4:15pm – Break (15 minutes)
4:30pm – Arik Shivek – Playing without the ball (1 hour)
5:30pm – Luis Guil – Spanish Men’s National Team concepts (1 hour)
6:30pm – Finish

Sunday 28th May
9am – Rob Newson (Sussex University) – Mental health and wellbeing for coaches (1 hour)
10am – Jenny Coady (West Ham) – TBC (1 hour)
11am – Simon Turner (MVMT Sports) – Plan, do, review made easy (1 hour)

All tickets to the conference include access to the Hoopsfix All-Star Classic in the afternoon of Sunday May 28th to watch the top under-19 prospects in the country battle it out. Tickets are £50 and can be purchased here, with all proceeds going to the Hoopsfix Foundation.

Coach Bios

Arik Shivek
Arik Shivek is an Israeli professional basketball head coach, and former head coach of the senior Israeli national basketball team, serving from 2009 to 2014. He has won multiple national titles, including three in the Netherlands, three in Israel and two in Belgium, having coached renowned clubs such as Maccabi Tel Aviv, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Antwerp Giants, and Dexia Mons-Hainaut.

Luis Guil Torres
Luis Guil is the assistant coach to the Spanish Senior Men’s national team, having won the FIBA Basketball World Cup in 2019 and EuroBasket in 2022. Guil Torres is one of the brightest minds in Spanish basketball having head coaching experience in the Spanish ACB, Japan, Venezuela and various Spanish youth national age group teams.

In 2013-14 he spent six months in East London with Barking Abbey Basketball Academy.

Andreas Kapoulas
Andreas Kapoulas has been Head Coach of the Bristol Flyers since their formation in 2005. He earned back to back promotions with the club, masterminding the Flyers’ rise through the NBL, which included a National Cup title in 2010 and a Division One Championship in 2011.

In 2014, he was named the BBL Coach of the Year, following the Flyers debut season in the British Basketball League. He also led the Flyers to a BBL Cup Final appearance in 2020, two trips to the BBL Play-off Semi-Finals and a highest-ever league finish of third during the 2022/23 campaign.

Kapoulas also has extensive national team experience as England U16s Head Coach, Great Britain U20s Head Coach, England Men’s Head Coach at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and most recently as Assistant Coach to the Great Britain Men’s side.

Jenny Coady
Jenny Coady is West Ham’s Head of Performance & Well-being. A former international basketball player and coach with Ireland, she is also a High Performance Coach Developer with UK Coaching, a role that sees her work across 13 Olympic sports.

Having played as a guard in basketball for Ireland and WIT Wildcats, Coady has worked with UK Coaching since August 2018, helping to support coaches across 13 high-performance Olympic sports on their respective journeys.

Prior to her position with UK Coaching, Coady worked with the London Gaelic Athletic Association as the lead performance analyst she is also accredited with the Irish Institute of Sport as a performance analyst.

Gary Maitland
Gary Maitland is a Professional Skills Coach with a rich experience in working with male and female professional athletes, National Team players, NCAA student-athletes and younger basketball enthusiasts who aspire to compete at higher levels.

Gary has worked with players who have had experience in the NBA, WNBA, Euroleague, Eurocup, ACB and other various top leagues around the world. His comprehensive training programmes are individually tailored to meet the needs of each client.

Gary’s portfolio of effective coaching and leadership also includes working with brands, organisations and people, such as Nike, Jordan Brand, Red Bull, Sky Sports, London Lions, Mega Slam Hoops, Seed Academy Ghana, Pure Sweat Basketball, Basketball England, Coca Cola, Ovie Soko, John Amaechi, and Bryan Colangelo.

Krumesh Patel
Leicester born and raised Krumesh Patel grew up playing basketball in the area before turning to coaching, working with the Leicester Riders programme where he currently heads up the WBBL side.

Helping to build up Charnwood academy, he has continued to develop the Leicester Riders Women’s pathway, and became the first British Asian Coach to win title in mainstream sport. He has also coached multiple seasons in Sweden, has been a GB U20 Women’s assistant coach, GB and England 3×3 coach, and has recently been named GB U20 Men’s Head Coach for the coming summer.

Jordanas Mejeras
A former professional in Lithuania, after an NCAA Division 2 college career at West Texas A&M University, Jordanas moved to England and founded the Baltic Stars Basketball Club in 2011, which have become one of the leading junior development programmes in the country. Mejeras was the London Region Coach of the Year in 2020, and Joe White Award winner at Deng Camp in 2014.

Simon Turner
Simon Turner is a basketball coach turned social entrepreneur who helps coaches and organisations use sport as a movement for good. Simon is Co-Founder of MVMT sports, alongside Coach Alan Keane. He’s also a Director of Upshot, an impact measurement company for sport and Co-Founder of We Play Together, a charity in Edinburgh that operates Blaze Basketball Club and The Crags Centre. For the past two decades Simon has been immersed in basketball, coaching and the use of sport as a tool for change.

Rob Newson
Rob Newson has been a Head Coach for over a decade, starting out with Worthing Thunder in NBL Division 1, before making stops in Iceland and Vietnam – where he was the Saigon Heat franchise’s first coach, and working for NBA Asia in Basketball Operations. Newson now coaches at Sussex University and Northfleet Academy.

Limited tickets are available here for purchase now.