Local basketball skills trainers win YouTube prize

The Curtiss family is well known in Santa Cruz County as Mr.'s Basketball in the area and now YouTube has recognized them:

Curtiss family wins $35,000 prize from YouTube for Shot Science videos
Ryan Moses
Santa Cruz Sentinel
5/03/2011

What started as a fun project to share his family's love of basketball has turned into a full-time job for Soquel's Casey Curtiss -- a job he's now getting paid for.

YouTube selected Curtiss' online instructional basketball video series, called Shot Science, as one of 25 winners of the website's inaugural Next Up contest Monday. The contest is designed to help promote the talents and careers of some of YouTube's best video producers. Each of the winners will travel to New York later this month to attend the first YouTube Creator Camp for training and mentoring on how to build the brand, and receive a $35,000 grant to spend on their projects...

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Here is the trio's Shot Science site.

Tom Curtiss' shot science

Being a longtime subscriber to the school of you can either shoot or you can't, we now believe improvement is possible. Not to say approaching Ray Allen-level if you currently are a rimbreaker or backboard smasher with your heaves but at least moderate improvement.

If you are in the Santa Cruz or Monterey Bay area, Tom Curtiss and his Shot Science enterprise are worth checking out. He even offers on-line videos that are of benefit. Go here.

Shot Science featured again

The Shot Science staff also recently received full-length coverage in the local newspaper:

Curtiss family teaching science of shooting on YouTube
Ryan Moses
Santa Cruz Sentinel
1/30/2010

When I have a question, I often turn to YouTube. The internet video site has taught me everything from guitar chords to how to make the world's best scrambled eggs. I've also learned that a goat is capable of walking across a tight rope with a monkey on its head [sometimes I ask some strange questions].

So when I started playing basketball again for the first time since middle school, I turned to my internet teacher for a lesson on how to improve my severely rusty jumper. I soon found that a lot of people have a lot of different tips on the "right" way to put the ball in the hoop. A search for "jump shot" yielded 57,600 results.

It was a bit overwhelming. Luckily, somebody told me a local basketball coach had released a series of YouTube videos with lessons on shooting fundamentals and other basketball skills.

The series is called Shot Science, and it's produced by Soquel High boys assistant coach Tom Curtiss and his sons, Chase and Casey. Tom has been coaching football and basketball since 1961, including more than 25 years courtside, and has been teaching individual and group clinics on his backyard court since 2002. He has quietly helped develop some of the best players to come through the county in recent years, including 2007 Santa Cruz Coast Athletic League MVP Scott Krueger of San Lorenzo Valley High and current standouts Shayne Perryman and Robby Gibbs of St. Francis, Mitch Postle of Harbor, and Zen Maki and Taylor Kientzel of Santa Cruz...

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Learn to shoot the right way...meaning better

Are you one of those players who opposing teams love to see hoisting shots up during games? Does your coach visibly cringe when you attempt an outside shot? Is your number absent when defenders call out among themselves which number they will guard?

Okay, you get the drift.

You need to visit the Shot Science site. The proprietors also have a Shot Science YouTube channel.

Sure, you can receive in-person coaching but there is plenty of assistance available that doesn't require you to even leave your computer.

Give it a shot (pun intended).

Here is an inspirational story

You can't top this story. Whenever we feel life isn't fair or our problems are insurmountable, re-read the following:

A year after stroke in jamboree football game, Christian Bauerle, 17, hopes to play for Soquel High's basketball team
Jim Seimas
Santa Cruz Sentinel
8/30/2009

A year ago, Soquel High's Christian Bauerle suffered a stroke on the football field that left him fighting for his life.

It's been a remarkable recovery for the newly turned 17-year-old, who was left temporarily paralyzed last August.

Bauerle -- described by Knights coaches as the best athlete in the junior class before the stroke -- has not only learned to walk, talk and eat again, he's swimming, running and catching and throwing balls. He has been assured roster spots on both the Knights' football and basketball teams -- his inspirational story of rehabilitation ensured that...

Go here for the remainder.

Want to shoot the ball better?

In the Santa Cruz area, a shot doctor resides. He tends to those whose arms, elbows, wrists and feet need aiding and abetting when lofting the ball towards the rim.

His name is Tom Curtiss, the longtime boys basketball coach of yesteryear at Soquel High and now a member of the West Valley Basketball Club coaching staff.

Here's a link to his site on which various clinics are coming up this week.

Here's a feature we did back in late 2008 on Chase Curtiss, Tom's son who turned out to be quite the shooter.