WS Chronicle

The game of basketball has been close to the heart of Charles Crews for as long as he can remember. He has now turned that passion into not only teaching the game to area youth, but also conditioning athletes in other arenas.

Crews attended East Forsyth for his first two years of high school, but graduated from Glenn High School. He continued his education and basketball career at North Carolina A&T State University initially, before transferring to Montreat College for two seasons. He returned to the area once his son was born and graduated from A&T.

He began coaching soon after graduation. He was introduced to the world of training when one of his players asked for some one-on-one training to help him better develop and the rest is history.

“I have always been a travel-ball coach and I had a kid about six or seven years ago that asked me to work him out and his mom said, ‘I’ll pay you,’” said Crews. “I said okay and later on he had a friend that wanted to be trained. I remember posting the workouts on social media and people were asking me if I trained other people.

“After that, every time I posted a video, it became a word-of-mouth thing where people would see the workouts on other people’s pages and they would reach out and contact me.”

Fast-forward to now and Crews is averaging one or two new clients every week. He is not only a coach, but he is also a certified speed and agility trainer, as well as a certified personal trainer. He is now working on becoming a certified nutrition coach. He does not limit himself to basketball as he trains athletes in other sports as well, such as soccer and baseball.

“I have always been involved with working out,” he said. “I would have kids that I trained, and I would have parents asking me if I could give them some pointers, so I started posting those videos as well and that’s what inspired me to go get my personal training certification.”

Crews is currently fundraising to have enough capital to purchase his own facility. His goal is to have his own gym facility to serve as a “one-stop shop” for athletes to come and train. He says he doesn’t want to be classified as a trainer, but more so as a “developer.”

Crews gets great pleasure out of seeing his players develop over time. He prefers clients who need a lot of work versus having players who are already at their peak.

“The biggest satisfaction I get is when a kid that I trained comes back and says, ‘Coach, that move we worked on, I tried it and it worked in the game,’” Crews continued. “Once I hear that, that is all the satisfaction I need, because they were confident to use it in the game and they see that it works and that means they have developed.”

As a coach, Crews has his own basketball organization: for the girls he has the Kernersville Lady Comets and for the boys he has Team Crews. He has multiple teams in different age groups for both the boys and girls.

Crews not only trains his kids on the court, he also gives them life lessons as well. He tells them of his basketball career and what can happen if you don’t stay focused on the goal.

  “I tell the kids all the time that I was really good and there is no telling where I could have been if I would have had my head straight,” he said. “I took basketball pretty far, but there is no telling how far I could have taken it if I had better grades or got into trouble off the court.

“I just tell them, if they focus on their goals on the court and focus in the classroom, the sky is the limit. At the end of the day, the thing is trying to take someone further than I took myself.”

For more information on Charles Crews’ training, please contact him at crewscontrolsport@gmail.com, his Instagram page getbettereverydaysports, or his Facebook page Charles Crews.