FAQs

Arruda’s Basketball Club offers youth basketball training focused on developing the right
way! Build basketball skills. Understand the Fundamentals. Establish a Growth Mindset
through Competition.

Arruda’s Basketball Club is a group of current and former athletes under the Leadership
of Josh Arruda, current assistant Coach at Marymount University for the Men’s
Basketball Program.

The program prides itself on three core values of: Persistent Optimism, Permanent
Presence, and Open, Honest, Transparent Communication.

This program strives to educate youth athletes in the Arlington Community not only how
to be a better player but also a better person in a transformational manner through
relationship building, habit stacking, and mindset building.

Players of all skill levels! We have experience working with athletes ages 5-16 at any point of
experience from beginner to Varsity to College Aspirations.

We work best with willing learners that adopt our core values of Persistent Optimism,
Permanent Presence, and Open, Transparent, Honest Communication. We want to cater our
workouts to your needs alongside our expertise. However, we cannot do that without the athlete
having an eagerness to compete with themself to get better everyday!

Sweat Equity + Growth Mindset = Success

Nobody became successful in one day. You must put in the work, but also have a willingness to learn. We need to define what success is. Make that our goal. Then align our work ethic and commit to the plan along with the sacrifices to build the bridge towards it.

We make intentional plans and put our focus towards them!

This is all around our basic focus of understanding the fundamentals, building basketball skills, and establishing the growth mindset.

LEARN TO REFLECT

Players will be encouraged to fill out the ABC Workout guide after each workout. This builds towards the ideas of self reflection and how if we look inward and be honest and transparent with ourselves, we can develop awareness to build upon both our strengths and weaknesses. In the guide document they will write down the core value of the day and carefully detail the drills that they did for that day. After each workout they should compile their ABC Workout guides and have a built in drill kit to apply towards themselves on their own time! You can be better with us, but you can be great by working out yourself!

Journaling is a concept that may make young athletes feel uncomfortable, but we feel as if in the long run this will help them build a plan for themselves and develop the skills of reflection, self-awareness, and self-accountability. As we all know, these are three important life skills that apply towards everything.

Click here to download Arrudas Basketball Club Workout Reflection Guide

We offer individual, small group, large group, clinics, and camps! Every kind of session you
would need for growth! We recommend starting with an individual session and then exploring group options in the future if possible. This helps us assess important fundamental details early and in a focused environment. The ultimate growth plan would be to do 3+ sessions a week with a variance from individual, small group, and large group.

Professionals play in 3 environments:
Individual skill sessions, small groups with small sided games, and then 4 on 4 or 5 on 5
competitive games. This provides all different styles of game play and experience.

Lee Community and Senior Center and Park.
5722 Langston Blvd, Arlington, Va 22207.

This is an outdoor court right behind the building in between the baseball field, garden, and
community center. We WISH we had an indoor space, but we are not quite at that capacity yet, with that being said the positives to this outdoor court location is great accessibility and
convenience to our clients. More often than not, our parents are off handling all kinds of errands during mid-sessions: cooking dinner, picking up groceries, picking up other siblings, or hanging out and doing their work at the benches!

Session timing can be customized at your preference. Our typical weekday hours during the
school year are 3:30pm – 9:30pm. During the Summer we are much more flexible for those with varying schedules. Due to our staff of trainers being available at all times we can set up
sessions anywhere between 5am – 9:30pm.

Initial Sessions will be run by Coach Arruda himself, if available. If not, it will be done with one of our junior staff trainers, who are all current or former College Athletes and College Coaches, some of them are Marymount Basketball Players (this has proven to be an awesome community builder). They have the experience, training, coaching philosophy, and curriculum already prepared for them, so that each session is perfectly catered to our youth athlete’s needs.

Training costs are explained on the Home and Training pages.

We work with a strict policy that we will never exceed our ratio of 8 players to 1 coach. So in any setting camp or group, there will always be 1 Coach to 8 players at a maximum.

Workouts for individuals and group sessions are 45 minutes. We focus on developing 3 specific skills and devoting at least 15 minutes to each skill. We firmly believe in the simple rule of 3 for good retention and learning probability. We also will never cut a session short when on the cusp of overcoming a learning hurdle!

Triple threat is a common basketball teaching. At ABC, we call it the Quadruple Threat. We focus on passing, shooting, dribbling and the most important one to Coach Arruda, pivoting.

The two other skills we focus on are more on the mental side. Character building being one of them that we focus on through the concepts of sweat equity and growth mindset. We work on this by adding a core value to the focus of every workout to pair with those two pillars.

The other is decision making. Coach Arruda’s mantra of Festina Lente (Make haste slowly in Latin or Be Quick, Don’t Hurry in John Wooden English).

We want to train our athletes to make good decisions on the court and off and as you all know that requires making good decisions with patience but also being proactive and aggressive in our approach! We want to attack the day, but not foolishly!

School’s Out Sports Day Camp is a single day summer camp from 9am to 1pm. It offers basketball training and other athletics in a controlled focused learning environment. Every day has an important core value or life lesson that is implemented into each and every drill. Then this concept is talked about in each drill and competition. There is 3.5 hours of gameplay with a 30 minute lunch where we discuss the life lesson concept in more detail.

WHO CAN JOIN?
Any youth athlete, ages 5-16.

WHERE ARE THE SESSIONS LOCATED?
Madison Manor park Address: 6225 12th Rd N, Arlington, VA 22207

WHAT TO EXPECT?
You can expect a full day of basketball training with skill work including: dribbling, passing, shooting, and pivoting. This training includes small sided games, full court competition, and additional skill competitions. At camp, we DON’T just do basketball, we also add other fun activities outside of basketball to work on our agility skills, footwork, hand eye coordination. There will be a lot of character building, personal development and relationship building going on at camp all centered around a life principle!

WILL THERE BE GAMES AND COMPETITIONS?
There will be a lot of basketball drills, small sided games, and other sporting activities, while also adding a competitive aspect as well. We also encourage each student-athlete to bring a book in case they want to take a break and relax for a moment.

WILL THERE BE INDIVIDUALIZED SKILL IMPROVEMENT?
There will be a major focus on skill development in the early part of camp. With a focus on what Coach Arruda calls Quadruple Threat (shoot, pass, dribble, pivot), each drill will be intentionally instructed towards the mastery of one of these concepts.

HOW WILL MY CHILD’S PROGRESS BE TRACKED?
On our site, we have an “ABC WORKOUT GUIDE”. This document is for each student-athlete to fill out after camp to discuss what they learned and the core value around it. True progress is tracked in the mindset and with retention. Understanding of the fundamentals goes hand in hand with true skill development. This reflection tool will help parents, students, and coaches have a plan in the future on what to work on and what our strengths and weaknesses are moving forward.

WHAT ARE THE CAMPS’ GOALS?
The camp goal is to establish an understanding of SWEAT EQUITY and the GROWTH MINDSET. With the ability to work hard and take a willing learning approach to everything we do, we as people can accomplish anything we want. We hope to instill this mindset within our community.

WHAT SHOULD THEY BRING?
They should bring good sturdy sneakers (preferably basketball shoes), a water bottle, and lunch. Bringing your own basketball is highly recommended but if your child does not have one there will be extras available at camp.

IS THERE LIMITED ENROLLMENT?
There will be limited enrollment due to how many coaches can be present. The goal is to make sure everyone is getting as close to a 1 on 1 connection as possible. So secure your spot while available!

IS THERE ANY OTHER INFORMATION?
Medical Liability Waiver. EVERY STUDENT IS REQUIRED TO FILL OUT A MEDICAL WAIVER AND SOCIAL MEDIA WAIVER as well prior to competing.

Since the courts we use are outdoors, we will cancel and give you a credit towards your next session. However, all of the best basketball players in the world have played in the rain. If your student-athlete is interested in doing the session regardless, we will cater it towards just shooting and low intensity movements to avoid slippage.