‘Not just basketball’: MODE Prep takes holistic approach to building national prep circuit basketball program

The MODE Prep national prep circuit boys basketball team, based out of Liberty Launch Academy in Liberty Lake, is not only surviving, but it is thriving on – and off – the basketball court. And the latter part, those within the organization feel, is what matters most.

“Building something and leaving a footprint is what’s most important to me,” coach Jon Adams said.

Adams, along with director of basketball Scott Reid and MODE founder and owner Luke Kjar, feels like the program is “checking all the boxes” 28 games into its first season. Kjar also is the founder and executive director of Liberty Launch Academy, a private, nonprofit K-12 school in its fourth year in Liberty Lake. Tuition is $12,600 a year.

They figured the basketball part would take care of itself, though pulling nine players from across the globe into the Pacific Northwest and getting them to play as a cohesive unit so quickly has been a chore unto itself.

“Things are going better than expected,” Reid said. “We’ve had a number of other programs call us and share that they can’t believe we are where we’re at in Year 1, both playing ability, structure, amenities – just all of what goes into building a basketball team. We’ve been told by a handful of other schools that we’re already where they were at Year 4 or Year 5. So we’re really pleased with, you know, all areas of basketball.”

“I’m always five years ahead, so it’s getting there, and I see where it can go,” Kjar said. “And so, yeah, we’ve done a phenomenal job for the first year. … I’m an entrepreneur, so I don’t get surprised because I’m expecting surprises. I expect there to be nuances and differences in how things end up going to what might have been the vision. But then how it happens? Well, I’m on along for the ride.”

MODE Prep has 13 wins against 15 losses this season, playing most weekends in tournaments across the country. Six months ago, the team was still just a concept.

As a live-in national prep circuit program, the MODE Prep administrators have been building groundwork on the fly for what they hope will become a premier destination for elite high school basketball players.

“The word is out,” Adams said. “We’re getting kids who are wanting to transfer from big-time programs.”

Housing. Food. Recovery. School. A sense of “home.” All of these things are essential to a group of teenagers who are hundreds, if not thousands, of miles away from their families on their basketball journey.

And each of the administrators, coaches and support staff have been wearing more than one hat in order to get the program off the ground this year and build the framework for expanding the basketball program, with the hope of adding other sports as well.

“Scott and Luke and I sat down, I guess, about three weeks ago, and said, ‘OK, now we’re far enough in, what resources do we need next year,” Adams said. “This has given us a clear picture of what resources are going to be needed as we go from one team to three teams to multiple sports.”

But what do those resources look like? What does it take to build a national prep basketball team from scratch?

“I think it starts with Luke and his vision,” Reid said. “The amenities he put in the building, as far as the gym and the fitness center and the cafeteria for nutrition, health and wellness, recovery, were already inside the building. So we can do pretty much everything a basketball player does off the court within these walls.”

“We are all working multiple jobs,” Adams said. “I’m doing it 16 to 18 hours a day. I love every minute of it. … But we’re starting to parse those things out and we’ll hire people to do some of those jobs next year.”

As far as caring for the teenagers, those duties this year have fallen primarily to team trainer Vaea Fiefia, who also acts as the host family for the seven live-in players, and Nicole Simon, who volunteers as the “team mom.”

“These are high school kids, and to have someone like Nicole, who’s very motherly and takes care of them – it’s critical,” Adams said.

Simon, who drives her son Collin from Hayden to school at Liberty Lake every day, originally volunteered to help with travel arrangements and the logistics of moving a small army around the country every week. But her role as emotional support to the players has grown organically.

“I treat these boys how I would treat my own family,” Simon said. “I have built a relationship with them, and I love them, and they’re great kids, and it’s nice to be able to have my kid be a part of something like that.”

Collin Simon, along with fellow sophomore Hudson Reid, was at Coeur d’Alene High School last year. They followed Adams to the new school expecting to play for Liberty Launch Academy’s high school team. But when those plans fell through, the two were elevated to the national team.

“Our intention was to have multiple teams this year. They were gonna play in high school,” Adams said. “I would say that they have met that challenge and excelled in it. … They work harder than anybody in the program.”

Part of Nicole Simon’s duties is to be in contact with the live-in players’ families to make sure they are getting some of the comforts of home.

“I know all the boys’ birthdays, so I always keep an eye on that,” she said. “All the parents know that they are free to reach out to me whenever. … We have a very interactive group family chat, which is great, because a lot of the families are just really involved. And you know, even if they haven’t met, they can still communicate with each other, which is pretty cool.”

Simon invited two of the international players to stay with her family over the holidays.

“They’re from Serbia and Africa, and so they came and spent a few weeks at our house. It was great,” she said. “They decorated gingerbread houses. We took them bowling. We had a ton of fun with them. And it was great because my boys, I have a son at Gonzaga as well, and so my boys were able to get to know them on a different level.”

It’s a full-time job for Simon, who is volunteering that time.

“I have two teenage boys, you know?” she said. “I didn’t want it to be lost, the fact that these are still kids and that they still have teenager needs and things like that. And so that’s kind of been my job to help fill those areas for them.”

“She probably had no idea she was gonna be wearing so many hats when she offered to volunteer, and now she can’t quit,” Adams said. “She’s been essential.”

Fiefia specializes in sport-specific training for teams and individual athletes and has more than 20 years of experience in the field. He manages strength and conditioning and recovery for MODE Prep’s nine players. But he doubles as house manager, counselor, bus driver and cook for the diverse group of live-in players.

“I’m with the kids three hours a day,” Adams said. “Vaea’s with them the other 21 hours a day.”

“I just pretty much take care of them,” he said.

Despite the diverse backgrounds and cultures of the players, Fiefia said there hasn’t been any big personality conflicts in the group house, outside of “maybe a kid eating someone else’s food.”

“They all get along pretty well, and our main focus was to bring in good-character kids,” he said. “So any problems that we deal with here is way different than the other problems I’ve dealt with at other schools.”

“We have people that take care of us,” said junior Vuk Zeilc, from Serbia. “We’ve got our own rooms. We kind of customize our room the way we like, that way it feels like home. It’s pretty comfy. … We are pretty much like brothers now. It’s pretty fun having teammates hanging out with them literally every day, all day.”

The only thing that hasn’t gone quite to plan this year, much to Kjar’s consternation, has been fully integrating the players into Liberty Launch Academy, the K-12 private school he built on the MODE campus in Liberty Lake. The school is working on acquiring accreditation in order to educate the international players.

So for now, the players are enrolled in an accredited online program separate from the school. They study at their own pace in cubicles in a separate part of the building from the school.

“We’re doing some really cool things next year that’s going to be new and exciting that we weren’t able to do this year because we’re just getting our accreditation finalized, and that’s why we have the basketball team on a different program,” Kjar said.

“It’s different than a normal school, because you don’t have a teacher to teach you things,” sophomore Collin Simon said. But I like it because you can kind of get your own timing on things. I’m knocking out one class at a time and … then I can move on to the next class and get them done quicker.

Administrators are trying to keep the players active with field trips and other educational opportunities so that it’s not all just sitting at an isolated desk for six to eight hours a day.

“We do our best to do some stuff with the boys, you know, to bring them in,” Kjar said. “They went and did pottery. We’re trying to get them engaged in some other things that we can do.”

Kjar hopes that LLA’s accreditation will come within the next month, so that next year the basketball players will be fully integrated into the bigger school community he’s built.

“I don’t buy the idea of ‘It is what it is,’ ” he said. “We can do it a lot better our way, and with accreditation, we’re going to be able to do it that way.”