NCAA officially recognizes online academy. Here's how that helps ABQ basketball prep school players get recruited.

One New Mexico basketball team got its first win of the 2023-24 season on Wednesday and the season hasn’t even started.

The NCAA on Wednesday recognized Arizona-based Premier Prep Online Academy as a certified school, meaning its classes meet initial eligibility standards for freshmen looking to play sports at an NCAA Division I, II or III school.

Why that matters in these parts is because the Albuquerque Basketball Club’s prep school team is an affiliate of Premier Prep Online Academy, meaning New Mexico now has a new NCAA-recognized basketball prep school that college coaches — including those at the state’s two Division I and three Division II schools — can recruit the same as they have been allowed to do with players at traditional high schools.

“This is huge for our kids,” said Brandon Mason, president of the Albuquerque Basketball Club, which includes dozens of club-level and travel basketball teams as well as a prep school team.

“It opens some more doors for them to get exposure and get an opportunity to play at the next level while continuing their education.”

The team is not under the New Mexico Activities Association umbrella and can not compete against the state’s high school teams.

While ABC Prep is entering its third year, the past couple seasons the “prep” team was essentially a year-round AAU team comprised of players who attended local high schools — La Cueva, Del Norte and Cibola, for instance — and some were taking online classes.

ABC’s prep team and club team rosters have led to more than 30 players receiving at least some form of financial aid — included several being full scholarships at Division I schools — over the past two years.

Without the affiliation with an NCAA-approved school, the team could be recruited and evaluated by college coaches at summer events or if it was playing an approved prep school college coaches were allowed to watch, but those recruiters didn’t have the same access to evaluating or recruiting those players during the more traditional scholastic recruiting periods.

“Now, (college coaches) can come on down to 501 Main Street and watch a practice and recruit these kids on campus,” Mason said.

Without commenting specifically on ABC Prep, UNM Associate Athletic Director for Compliance Amy Beggin confirmed for the Journal that schools approved by the NCAA have classes that meet initial eligibility standards and that the university’s coaches can now recruit players on those teams in the same fashion as any other approved public or private high school.

While ABC Prep is still in its infancy stages, it played the past two seasons as a member of the Grind Session circuit and is now with the Elite Interscholastic Basketball Conference, which features some of the highest-profile prep school teams in the country.

ABC Prep’s facility includes a gym, weight room and workout area, multiple rooms devoted to classroom space and there are now players on the team in each grade level from 8th to 12th. There is also a house in Albuquerque where a coach and several players — from in state and out of New Mexico — live during the school year.

Among the ABC Prep team coaches — along with Mason — is former UNM Lobo Chris Perez, who has also coached in recent years at Legacy Academy in Albuquerque and at Northern New Mexico College. Perez is the academic advisor and ABC Prep’s primary point of contact with Premier Prep Online Academy.

Other coaches who are involved daily with the ABC Prep students off the court are former Lobos Dairese Gary and Darren Prentice, former NMSU Aggie Michael Nañez, former Eastern New Mexico player Jamal Washington, and many others.

While unique in many ways to New Mexico, sport-specific prep schools are far from new across the country.

Locally, of the 12 scholarship players on the current UNM Lobos men’s basketball roster, seven either played at a prep school in the United States (four) or attended a basketball academy outside the United States (three) before playing college basketball.

Two of the first team All-Mountain West players as selected by the coaches this past year were also former prep school players.