Successful clinic completes coach’s summer

For the past decade or so, Crystal Flint has been facilitating and hosting basketball camps for inner-city youth. “I was already doing the Triple Threat [formerly the Shooting Stars Clinic] camps for girls of all ages,” she said. “But I figured there was more to do.”

With that in mind Flint, currently the head girls’ basketball coach at Cretin Derham Hall, formed a partnership with Minneapolis Parks and Recreation to create the First Annual Triple Threat Girls Basketball BeElite Clinic for middle-school girls.

On this particular cool August day, Flint was at Richard Green Central Gymnasium in South Minneapolis instructing and demonstrating before 30 of the top middle-school basketball players in the inner city as well as the metro area.

What makes this clinic different from the others?

“This is week three of the clinic,” Flint said with pride. “I’m even more proud that the majority of the girls stuck with it the entire time.”

Being involved is nothing new for Flint, who came to the University of Minnesota on a women’s basketball scholarship after a stellar prep career at South Boston High School in Boston, MA.

After helping the Gophers earn their first NCCA tournament birth in 1994, Flint went on to become one of the state’s top high school basketball officials, spent a couple of years as head coach at Concordia University-St. Paul, and most recently coached at Minneapolis North before moving on to Cretin Derham Hall.

She took over the Shooting Stars Clinic five years ago (changing it to the Triple Threat Girls Basketball Clinic) after founders Linda Roberts, Lisa Lissimore and Kathie Eiland-Madison — all former gophers basketball players — decided it was time to move on.

It has been a very busy summer for Flint, to say the least.

First there was Triple Threat Girls Basketball Clinic, the Triple Threat Senior Showcase, the Triple Threat Middle School Showcase, and now the Triple Threat BeElite Clinic.

Flint was beaming with pride when expressing her feelings about the completion of the clinic and her busy summer. “My heart is full,” she said, reflecting on the summer’s success, especially the success of the Triple Threat BeElite Clinic.

“My summer is complete.”