Local student-athletes should prepare to lace up their sneakers and head to Chesapeake College during the month of July for a one-month summer intensive with the J Noah Skills Academy.

The J Noah Skills Academy is dedicated to providing mentorship and professional development skills for middle school student-athletes. The organization’s vision is that students who graduate from the Academy will possess the knowledge, tools, and confidence they need to succeed both personally and professionally.

The Academy’s program is designed to help student-athletes gain an understanding of project management through basketball. The tools they receive enable students to better manage the small details and routines of everyday life and provide sought-after skills for when they enter the workforce. The Academy uses frameworks provided by the Project Management Institute and reinforces them with basketball content. The program consists of two parts: basketball training and classroom time.

During basketball training, student-athletes learn the fundamentals of basketball and practice drills using a Dr. Dish shooting machine, which has an application that can track each athlete’s progress over time. J Noah’s Founder, Coach, and Classroom Facilitator, Jordan Pearlstein, also incorporates exercises learned during his 94 Feet of Game certification training with Coach Phil Handy of the LA Lakers. Training time helps student-athletes hone their skills while reinforcing the importance of consistency and discipline when working to achieve a goal.

During classroom time, students work through a customized curriculum that uses basketball-related examples and terminology to introduce project management concepts, including scope and time management, cost, goal setting, risk assessment, contingency planning, and more. Students then implement these concepts by using the NBA 2K24 PlayStation video game to complete a series of tasks, culminating in a mock NBA draft. After completing the NBA draft, student-athletes create an action plan, which requires them to identify their personal, athletic, and academic goals and develop a strategy to achieve them.

The J Noah Skills Academy summer intensive for middle school student-athletes is hosted by Chesapeake College. This four-week session begins on July 1 and will take place in the college’s Health Professions and Athletic Center (HPAC) Monday through Thursday from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. The program will be closed on Independence Day.

The program cost is $500 for the full session. Register for the program through our Instant Enrollment portal.

Scholarships are available to help offset tuition costs for up to 6 student-athletes.Those requesting financial assistance should contact Rebecca Fauver at rfauver@chesapeake.edu to request an application.

The Academy is also seeking an assistant to help Coach Jordan and the student-athletes during the month of July. Basketball experience is required. Interested candidates should send a resume to [email protected].

The J Noah Skills Academy is a nonprofit organization that relies on generous donations from local foundations, businesses, and individuals to keep its tuition low and offer scholarship assistance to those in need of additional financial support. To learn more about the J Noah Skills Academy and how you can help student-athletes learn the skills for success, visit jnoahskills.org.