How Grind Prep is changing Oklahoma HS basketball scene: 'You hope to be the trendsetter'

Editor's note: This story is Part 1 of a four-part series offering an in-depth examination of Grind Prep, a new prep school in Oklahoma looking to change the high school basketball game. From the inception to the players to the viability of such a school, The Oklahoman will look at every aspect.

A wooden staircase leads to a modern loft in downtown Oklahoma City’s Film Row. The space is chic, atop a pizza joint overlooking Sheridan Avenue. The floorplan is spacious, complete with a kitchen, lounge, office space and a ballroom.

But this is no luxury apartment. It’s a school.

Grind Prep Academy, with 35 students from Grades 6 to 12, is a basketball-focused prep school optimized to send elite high school hoopers to the college ranks.

Sports-focused prep schools like IMG Academy in Florida, Oak Hill Academy in Virginia and Prolific Prep in California have become the preferred option over traditional high schools for many top-tier high school athletes.

The model has been largely untested in Oklahoma, though.

Until now.

“What we’re doing, I think this is probably the first time,” said Carlos Adamson, Grind Prep’s CEO.

For Adamson, this isn’t his first time building a program from the ground up.

In 2014, Adamson was hired as Putnam City West High School’s girls basketball coach. He took over a Patriots team that went 1-22 the season prior. A Putnam West program that had won 12 games, combined, in the last four seasons before Adamson’s arrival.

Adamson started winning in Year 1. Putnam West made the state tournament in the last two of Adamson’s four seasons as coach. The Patriots were state runner-ups in 2018, with The Oklahoman picking Adamson as the Big All-City Coach of the Year.

Later that summer, Adamson was hired as a Division-I assistant coach at Eastern Michigan. Adamson’s five seasons at Eastern Michigan helped spark his idea for Grind Prep, which would bring Adamson back home to Oklahoma City.

Adamson was exposed to the new era of college basketball, college sports in general, where the transfer portal and name, image and likeness (NIL) deals have changed the game.

Adamson saw how transfer players, as known commodities, were more valued than high school prospects. Why spend years recruiting a high school player when you can find a readymade player in the portal in less than a week?

High school recruiting is like using a slow cooker, patiently waiting for the payoff.

Recruiting players out of the portal …

“It’s a microwave,” said Adamson, snapping his fingers.

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'Hope to be the trendsetter’

With Grind Prep, Adamson is trying to reset the timer. Trying to flip the system by coaching high schoolers in a college environment — from the class schedule, to the practice schedule to the travel, to the level of competition.

That’s the appeal, like it or not, of Grind Prep and similar sports academies across the country and across the world. European soccer clubs have been doing this, more or less, for decades.

Adamson, who coaches the girls, brought on longtime friend Marques Warrior to coach the boys. The two of them go way back to an AAU program, Below the Rim, they ran out of Putnam West.

Adamson also hired former Oklahoma State and John Marshall standout Joe Adkins as a player development coach. Adkins coached some after his playing days, but he was working in the trucking industry when Adamson, ever the salesman, gave Adkins a call.

“Joe,” Adamson told him, “it’s time you give back to these kids again. You’ve been away for a long time. This is the right opportunity.’”

They talked a few more times before Adkins decided he was in.

“You hope to be the trendsetter,” Adkins said. “I think more people will try it now. I think it’s something everyone has always had an idea of and wanted to do, but nobody’s been willing to step out and try it, and Coach (Adamson) and his family decided to give it a try.”

Adamson and his staff have taken their Grind Prep teams all over the country, to Las Vegas and Phoenix, Daytona Beach and Memphis, Dallas and Houston.

“The list goes on,” Adamson said.

Grind Prep only played a handful of games locally. Grind doesn’t have a dedicated gym, but it hosted games at Woodson Gym on the south side of OKC. '

A hefty tuition helps cover the travel to tournaments, where Grind faces stiff competition against other prep schools.

Putting his college coaching hat back on, Adamson said these AAU-style tournaments, played during the school year, make it easier for college coaches to scout and recruit players, thus giving players more exposure than playing one game on a Friday night.

“Look at the rankings on ESPN or 247 Sports,” Warrior tells prospective students. “Look at the rankings and look at where those kids go to school. Out of the top 25, maybe three of them go to a regular high school.”

By the time Grind Prep opened, two of the top boys players in the state had defected to out-of-state prep schools.

Edmond North’s T.O. Barrett, who signed with Missouri, transferred to Link Academy in Branson, Missouri. David Castillo, a Kansas State signee, transferred from Bartlesville to Sunrise Christian in Wichita.

“By the time we decided to do this it was too late,” Warrior said. “They was already gone. We’re losing top players in Oklahoma to prep schools for bigger exposure. Oklahoma basketball is growing, and they need a bigger opportunity.”

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‘It’s elite level'

As Adamson gives a tour of the school, it’s like he’s walking through a dream that materialized just as he envisioned. There are two classrooms filled with desks and two computer labs, though they’re empty on a Friday morning. Grind, an acronym for “Greatness Resides In Determination,” has a Monday through Thursday schedule with each school day lasting between four to six hours.

All of the students take virtual classes in person. It sounds like an oxymoron, but little about Grind Prep is normal.

Tuition is $15,000, with scholarship and financial aid available for students who qualify. The educational side of the school is facilitated by Florida-based Xceed Preparatory Academy, which is accredited through Cognia and makes sure student-athletes meet NCAA eligibility requirements.

Students are fed breakfast every morning and start class at 8 a.m. Middle schoolers and high schoolers are split up, and each student learns at their own pace, picking up at Grind Prep where they left off at their former school.

“The allure, the piece that works really well with Grind is that we can offer a virtual school program that fits their needs based on their sports schedules,” said Betty Norton, president of education for Xceed’s affiliate division. “So what does that look like? The students who attend Grind have a travel schedule, training schedule, practice schedule and their educational day is woven throughout.”

At lunch time, meals are prepared by Grind Prep’s very own chef.

Chicken teriyaki with rice is Adamson’s favorite. Warrior favors the hamburgers.

“The kids like the spaghetti, chicken alfredo and shrimp alfredo,” Warrior said.

Again, not a normal high school.

“We have kids that are trying to lose weight, kids that are trying to gain weight, so we implement all that stuff within our nutrition program,” said Adamson, pointing to a smoothie bar.

After lunch, the students are transported in vans 12 miles north to the Oklahoma Athletic Center off Lake Hefner Parkway on Hefner Road. It’s where their day might start with workouts from 6 to 7 a.m., and where it might end with another workout from 1 to 4 p.m.

The middle schoolers practice when the high schoolers are in class and vice versa. Grind has separate boys and girls teams that practice apart but train together in the offseason.

While athletes at traditional schools might be in the middle of spring sports, the Grind Prep kids came back from spring break and dove back into basketball — their year-round obsession.

“The training is intense,” Adamson said. “It’s elite level. Everything is geared toward getting them ready to be prepared to be college athletes.”

But these are still high schoolers, still kids, after all.

One of the challenges Grind Prep has faced is trying to foster the social aspect of school. Grind’s building has more the feel of a Silicon Valley startup than a middle/high school.

“It’s a small school, it’s almost that homeschool feel,” Adamson said. “Kids really wanted to be in a school setting and dances and proms and all of that stuff. We still give them that feel, that element.”

Sure enough, Grind Prep students had a dance at the school earlier in the year.

Grind is in the infancy of its existence, but its students like the idea that they could be on the ground floor of something.

“It was definitely a big leap,” said Grind Prep senior David Wilson, who transferred from Norman North. “It took a lot of trust.”

Wilson and teammate Cedric Dixon, who transferred from Tulsa Union, are both committed to play at Independence Community College in Kansas.

One of Grind’s top boys players? Carlos Adamson Jr., a smooth point guard whose dad is responsible for this whole thing.

“It’s the best feeling,” Adamson said, “starting this program with him.”

Adamson, as he finished giving a tour of the school, said he’s already looking for a new space.

Just one year in, Grind is growing. More top players are on the way, and Adamson envisions the school having its own facilities one day, perhaps even expanding into other sports beyond basketball.

Of course there are skeptics.

The concept of Grind Prep is relatively unproven, especially here in Oklahoma.

“Nah, that ain’t gonna work, it’ll fail,” said Adamson, reciting some of the noise he’s heard.

But one year in, Grind Prep appears to be on solid ground, potentially blazing an alternative route for Oklahoma’s top basketball players.

“I think people are starting to see the vision,” Adamson said, “and really wanting to be a part of it.”

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: How Grind Prep is changing Oklahoma's high school basketball scene