Our Story
NextGen Ballers was founded in 1998 by current owner, Jordan Stevens, the son of former NBA legend Jason Stevens. Being born into a basketball family, Jordan was exposed to the game of basketball throughout his childhood. His father, Jason, bought Jordan his own hoop when Jordan was 4 years old, and from that day Jordan developed a genuine love for the game of basketball. Over time, Jordan began to dream up his own aspirations to make it into the NBA one day, and recieved a full ride scholarship to Boston College after his senior year season of high school. Unfortunately, Jordan suffered a severe back injury in his Junior year at Boston College, which ended his career as an athlete and forced him to find a new career path in life. Not missing a beat, Jordan decided to use his degree in Entrepreneurship to open up a summer basketball program in Concord, NH in which he called 'NextGen Baskeball', and that was aimed to help expose young children to the game of basketball and to help young athletes improve their games. In our 22 years of business, the organization now known as 'NextGen Ballers' has been a whopping success. We now have 7 locations around New England, and have proudly accepted the award of being recognized as a top 20 basketball camp in the country on 5 seperate occasions. We have also received national recognition from major sports media companies like ESPN for our work with kids. Our Concord program has helped to bring our city's high school team seven State Championships since our opening, and have produced ten athletes who went on to play basketball for D1 universities.
Our Mission
When Jordan first started NextGen Ballers his primary goal was to give kids who were already interested in basketball the opportunity to work on their skills over the summer, and to become better players by the time the season came around. This is a goal that he feels he has accomplished since day one of the the program, and that he is going to continue to accomplish throughout the life of his business. Jordan and the rest of our staff, however, have began to see the bigger picture of what our program can acomplish for our city and the kids within the city. Utilizing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, our program has started to stress the importance of maintaining an education to our kids. For kids already enrolled, our program has put in a requirment that all members must maintain a 3.0 GPA in order to remain enrolled in our camps. For kids who are not in school, NextGen Ballers will accept applications from all applicants with a contractual promise from the parents that the child will be enrolled to a public school of their choosing, and that we will pay for any of the expenses required for the first three years of education. We hope that these policies will help to keep as many children in our area educated as possible, and that the kids will see the importance of getting an education in order to play basketball at a high level. We also hope that our program can be an outlet for kids who may be strugling at home, and a way to keep kids busy and off the streets under the guidance of a structured program. We are excited to see what is next for our program and the number of young lives we can make a positive impact on.
