How 'dreams are going to start' in new Young Family Athletic Center for youth athletics in Norman

Sweat dripped down Keeley Parks’ face as she dribbled up the court.

While Frankie Parks, her father and Norman High girls basketball head coach, watched from the baseline, she surveyed the floor and sliced through the lane, gathered her dribble, took two steps and floated through the air for a layup.

All the while an endless loop of Trae Young highlights rolled on a 74-foot video board behind the five-star class of 2025 prospect and sunlight glimmered on the fresh, new hardwood courts in Norman’s new Young Family Athletic Center.

“It’s nice and definitely looks like it’s a million dollars,” Keeley, the No. 19 ranked recruit in the nation, said of her first impression of the complex named for the last Norman High school star, who was ranked as the No. 30 recruit in the 2017 recruiting class. “It's really convenient. It’s going to be home for me.”

The center, which started hosting youth leagues in late January and had a formal ribbon cutting on Monday, marks a new beginning for youth and high school sports in the city and state.

🗣📢 Shoutout to @YFAC_Sports (Young Family Athletic Center) for allowing @NHSWBB to practice!! This facility is a game changer for our community!! 🧡🖤🐯@rayfordyoung @kellenmccoy33 pic.twitter.com/QVGqvmhZDN

— Frankie Parks (@CoachFParks) February 16, 2024

The 122,000-square-foot facility includes eight basketball courts, 12 overlaid volleyball courts and 18 pickleball courts funded in part by Young, who recently signed a 5-year, $215 million contract with the Atlanta Hawks and competed in his third NBA All-Star game on Sunday.

Trae, like every Norman basketball player, once played at the hangar, which has five courts, and an adjacent YMCA facility that has three courts. There he sprained a few ankles, shot 3-pointers and learned to love the sport like kids will now be able to on a heightened level in the YFAC.

“It's beyond awesome because something like this can change a kid's life,” Rayford Young, Trae’s father, told the OU Daily. “This facility is one of the best in the nation — not just in Oklahoma and in the region — it’s one of the best in the nation. Kids have the confidence to know that they can come in here any day, every day and work on their games. These are NBA-level basketball courts.

“Man, I wish Trae could’ve had that.”

Now, Keeley and generations of high school and youth athletes will be able to follow in Trae's footsteps in a facility he helped create.

“There’s gonna be big-time tournaments here,” Rayford said. “The big-time coaches will have to come here and you're gonna see them sitting around watching players like Keeley Parks and the people she's competing with. That’s the whole thing this is about.”

When Norman High wrapped up practice on Friday, Keeley was the final Tiger player to leave the facility. On her way out, OU sophomore guard Milos Uzan walked in.

Both glanced at the screen of Trae’s highlights, which included a flurry of flashy no-look passes and his pull-up jumpers delivered in NBA arenas around the nation, a not-so-subtle reminder of the places where the sweat equity earned in such a facility could help the next generation go.

“It just shows these younger kids if they really want to do it, it’s certainly achievable,” Frankie said. “Here are some prime examples of that. You don't have to move to Oklahoma City or go to a different state to get notoriety. If you're working hard and doing what you need to do here in Norman, it's definitely accessible and available for really anything that you want to achieve.”

‘A very special place’

Before visitors walk into the YFAC, they’ll often see planes landing and taking off from OU’s Max Westheimer Airport. And just east of the airport looms Norman’s Optimist Club gym — a World War II era hangar — that for decades was the home of Norman’s youth basketball.

The sun-stained wooden structure has no windows. The northern parking lot is filled with gravel. The facility's doors are rusted and beaten, and on any given weekday an old metal chair props open the entrance to one of Norman’s most-coveted basketball havens.

Inside are five crimson-and-cream colored tile courts in what was once home to the U.S. Naval operations. In June 1943, sailors crammed 53 planes inside as a tornado barreled from Lawton to Norman.

The complex even hosted the filming of scenes from the classic 1996 film “Twister,” which recently had its sequel, “Twisters,” filmed in different parts of the state. Nowadays, kids and coaches use the space for youth league practices.

One recent afternoon, Kyle Bookout helped coach five boys inside of the hangar. During the day, Bookout is the technology manager at the University of Oklahoma Health Center, but he’s been an assistant coach for youth basketball simply because “his boys want him to,” and he carries over the love that his father had from coaching.

“It's been nice for the kids to have something out here that OU has shared with them,” Bookout said. “It's served its purpose well, but it's definitely time for a change. You're not used to tile courts growing up playing basketball. It's slick and it's not ideal for grip or any of that stuff.”

Bookout remembers the first time he walked into the facility in 2003. He helped run basketball camps alongside his brother and former OU basketball player, Kevin Bookout, who played alongside Kellen Sampson.

Sampson grew up in Norman while his father and now-Houston head coach, Kelvin, coached the Sooners from 1994-2006. He, much like Kyle, has vivid memories of their time in the hangar.

“That was the cradle of everything that's great about the Norman community,” Kellen said. “When you say, ‘We grew up playing against each other,’ that was the arena.

“With those linoleum floors, I think all of our hips and knees are still bruised and beat up from diving and crashing on (them). There were no pads against the wall so you're just crashing into wooden structures and you didn’t think anything of it because we all just wanted to play ball."

Kellen, now an assistant coach for the Cougars under Kelvin, can remember moments where he was “crying his eyes out” because he had just lost a youth league championship. But over time, those memories changed as he celebrated after scoring 40 points for the first time and as he won AAU games in high school.

“It's the first time that I really felt pressured in competition (in that building),” Kellen said. “I remember the nervousness and the pit of my stomach feeling during a close game there. It was the first time I really felt those emotions. It was the first place that I felt uniquely aware that I'm playing something bigger than just hoops. I'm playing for some status.”

Former Norman High and OU women’s basketball head coach Sherri Coale also shares fond memories of the building. When she was coaching the Tigers, they often practiced at the facility in the early fall if Norman High’s gyms were used by other teams.

“The hangar became a second home for us,” Coale said. “It was kind of that place where you just go to work and get better. You don't care if the floor is slippery, you just learned how to make better decisions because you know you're gonna slide. Sometimes we were playing around trash cans because the roof was leaking, and that became just another defender that you had to avoid.

“You had to love the game to go there and work — and what you got out of going there to work was worth it in spades.”

Stacy Hansmeyer, who played for Coale at Norman High before going on to win a national championship at UConn, grew up learning to love the sport in the hangar. Now it’s where she coaches a sixth-grade sixth girls team, an eighth-grade boys team and runs a weekly academy for youth basketball.

“I just feel that basketball has given me something really special,” Hansmeyer said. “It all started here in Norman, and it all started at The Optimist Club. That's a memory that I will cherish forever.”

For now, the hangar will continue to serve as a practice space for youth basketball leagues and academies, but the history of the venue will forever stick in the minds of those who grew up playing in it.

“It was our cathedral,” Kellen said. “It was our Rucker Park. It was our fill-in-the-blank, and we got a chance to go after the other kids in your age range to see where your game was at. that's why they carry so many moments of jubilation, and so many buckets and buckets and buckets of tears. Because it was the first place, for a lot of us, that we all learned to compete and that makes it infamous in the community.”

‘Where a lot of dreams are going to start’

When Kansas head coach Bill Self, an Okmulgee native, landed in Norman last weekend, he was awestruck by the YFAC.

Self toured the facility and immediately envisioned the talent that it’d bring to Norman and the change it could have on the community’s sports atmosphere.

He promptly texted Rayford.

“He was disappointed Trae didn’t go to Kansas,” Rayford said, “but he was happy that he stayed and gave back to the community. Now he’s going to remember walking in and know (he’s) going to be able to come down to Oklahoma this summer and recruit kids instead of Chicago, Dallas or other places.’”

The center is part of Norman Forward, a 15-year tax initiative to pay for quality-of-life projects across the city. It was inspired in part by parents’ complaints about having to drive to Wichita, Dallas, and other parts of the country to have their kids receive national recruiting attention.

My All Star…we still working though! Just getting started🏀❤️🙏🏾 pic.twitter.com/D4vGacL0Gf

— Ray Young (@rayfordyoung) February 19, 2024

Originally, the center planned to house a few basketball and volleyball courts, aiming to promote youth athletics in the area. But in 2019, both the Young Family Foundation and Blake Griffin’s family wanted to get involved.

The Griffin family wanted to invest in the project, according to Norman Parks and Recreation Director Jason Olsen, and the Young family was willing to make a $4 million donation to complete the costs funded by the $22.5 million through Norman Forward sales tax, a $2.7 million construction supplement from the University North Park Tax Increment District and $6.7 million from Norman Regional Health System.

After signing his max contract in 2021, Trae even offered to pay for the whole complex himself.

“He's always been wanting to do this,” Rayford said. “A lot of kids (in the NBA) want to do this, but there’s a difference between wanting to do it and knowing how to. This has always been his dream to have a (facility like this) where everybody in the community enjoys it. But, you have to know it takes a partnership, and that partnership is real here in Norman.”

Since opening in January, the YFAC has seen plenty of initial interest from the community, with close to 1,800 players already signing up for the youth basketball league. Olsen says that number is up 600-plus enrollees since 2023, when they had about 1,100-1,200 kids signed up for the program.

The complex will also host two major tournaments this summer. The first will be an Adidas women’s basketball event in June, the second will be called “Battle of the Brands,” a crossover event where Adidas, Puma and Under Armour-sponsored AAU teams compete against one another in a tournament. Those teams will occupy the new YFAC Men and Women’s lockerooms adjacent to the swimming pools.

Olsen also noted that it’s “very rare” for a facility to get one of these tournaments in its first year, especially during the NCAA live recruiting period, where Division I coaches can make instant contact with recruits across the nation. Having two of those contests in Norman will make it a premier event for the nation’s college basketball coaches.

Those events will pour more dollars into Norman’s economy. Tournaments of that caliber, according to Olsen, request and use up to 2,000-2,500 hotel rooms a night. The city has close to 3,500 hotel rooms, Olsen said, which means the tournaments could occupy up to 71% of the city’s hotel space at any given point 

In all, Visit Norman, based on a 2020 projection, estimates the eight basketball courts will bring in an estimated 38,000 overall visitors, 21,300 hoteliers and a $16.2 million economic impact. Alongside that, the two pools at the YFAC are expected to bring in 8,900 visitors, 6,720 hotel stays and have a $2.16 million economic impact.

“In a healthy situation, we make somewhere like probably about 10 to 15 grand on rental fees off a two or three-day tournament, but the economic impact runs way deeper than that,” Olsen said. “There was definitely a market for it and a need for it, and I think the community's excited about it.”

While its likely impact on the economy is evident, the YFAC has garnered even more excitement from players and coaches in Norman.

Kellen McCoy, who is Norman North’s boys basketball coach and YFAC’s supervisor, says the new building will add practice spaces for both high schools when their gyms are packed in the early fall, and provide more opportunities for players in the state.

Oklahoma is an under recruited state but a lot of people are trying to help change that, some of our best players are going juco right now, but they won’t finish there.. some will go D1 and some will go to other levels.. end of day School is being paid for.. wins!

— Kellen McCoy (@kellenmccoy33) February 11, 2024

“It gives more kids that opportunity here in Norman to succeed,” McCoy said. “Some teams or some kids may not have the means to travel around the country to get them the exposure that they may want nationally. So, when you have these events that we have coming in, coming here to Norman, it allows more kids locally to be able to have those opportunities.”

It will also give OU head coaches Porter Moser and Jennie Baranczyk opportunities to create more connections in the state.

Baranczyk has already become acquainted with the facility. On weeknights, draped in OU gear, you can sometimes catch her watching with her two daughters, Jordi and Hope, and son, Eli, playing in games at the gym. Occasionally, she’ll even shoot a few hoops with them on an empty court.

“To be able to have something like that here. It's really important just for, obviously, for the opportunities for the grassroots level,” Baranczyk said.

“I think that, apart from a recruiting standpoint, we want people to just fall in love with this place. It's a great front door to be able to bring people to Norman because once you come it's really hard to (not love it). I mean, you get this it's really a cool feeling because you're far from a city and you're in a college town. And, regardless of whether Norman is known for football or not, it's known for OU.”

Baranczyk, in three seasons with the Sooners, has seen the magic of both the old hangar and now the new center. Her two oldest kids were able to play at the Optimist gym and now her youngest has solely played at the center.

As a mom and a coach, it’s easy for Baranczyk to get emotional about the facility’s potential in the community. When she watches her kids, she doesn’t care if they like basketball; she wants them to fall in love with working hard, building good habits and having integrity.

The same logic applies to her coaching regimen and the opportunities she thinks the center will bring to everyone in Norman.

“We want to grow the game here at the grassroots level,” Baranczyk said. “I'm hoping they have a tournament during the day and they come over to our game at night.

“This place is going to be a place where a lot of dreams are going to start. And regardless of whether or not they end up being the next Trae Young or Courtney Paris or whomever, … sport brings out the best in us.”

“Screams big time”

When Kellen was a junior at OU, the then-New Orleans Hornets came to Oklahoma City due to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation in Louisiana.

The moment it was announced, he vividly recalls his father, Kelvin, telling him, “This is really going to hurt our attendance, but the residual is that there is going to be more kids in the state of Oklahoma who grow up loving basketball.”

For Kellen, the Young Family Athletic Center and Trae’s legacy in Norman are all byproducts of that. Since then, the Oklahoma City Thunder later became the first major league professional sports team in the state after moving here in 2008 from Seattle.

The Thunder has since seen NBA superstars like James Harden, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. In Norman, Trae has added to his own legacy playing at sold-out gyms in high school, committing to the Sooners and going top five in the NBA draft. Lindy Waters III, who attended Norman North, has become a role player for the Thunder.

“I think it's so cool that the most iconic basketball player (from Norman) in Trae Young, wanted to add capabilities and resources but also had the vision to put this together in Norman,” Kellen said. “My hometown, my home community deserves a modern place for new sports. … I think it's so cool.”

It’s hard to fully encapsulate what basketball, let alone athletics, has meant to a town like Norman.

On Thursday, Coale toured the center for the first time, but during the ribbon-cutting ceremony on Monday, she embraced the emotions of the moment.

“I walked around with my mouth open,” Coale said of her reaction. “It just makes me really proud of this community. I think when people from out-of-state, when they come here, it's going to influence their opinion of our community and our state. I mean, it just screams big time.”

Former OU men’s basketball coach Lon Kruger is excited as well, having visited it during the final phases of construction. He shares the optimism for the facility’s impact on OU, Norman’s high schools and the Young family.

“It's great that he's doing that,” Kruger said. “A lot of times people kind of forget where they're from and move on and not necessarily give back. It's great to see that and, and it’s not surprising from him. He had a great experience growing up and his family is right there in Norman.”

During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, as children admired the center with smiles on their faces, basketballs in their hands and Young’s jersey on their backs, Trae’s legacy was seen in the hometown that established his career and in the community members that have supported him along the way.

As Rayford reflected on Trae’s legacy in Norman, he couldn’t help but share memories of his son’s time playing at the hangar or YMCA. And, when asked what the former OU guard might’ve done if he had this type of facility growing up, he yearned about the possibilities.

“He would have lived here,” Rayford said. “It would have just changed his life.”