WS Chronicle

BY TIMOTHY RAMSEY 

THE CHRONICLE

The Quality Education Academy (QEA) has been known for their high level of play on the basketball court for the better part of a decade.  The focus now has switched to highlighting more local talent on the basketball teams on the middle school, junior varsity and varsity levels.

Issac Pitts, QEA national team head coach and school athletic director, says that QEA CEO Simon Johnson came to him and said since the national team has built up so much acclaim its time to include more of the players from the city of Winston-Salem and surrounding areas.

“He [Johnson] said he wanted to do something for this community and highlight the athletes here,” Pitts said.  “I agreed with him because it’s so many lives here in the Winston-Salem area and Triad as a whole with tremendous talent we just wanted to open up the doors for those kids.”

QEA has now joined the Central Carolina Conference along with the state high school association and will now carry basketball from the middle school level to varsity high school.  They will also bring back the national team at a later date that has yet to be determined.

This is the first year that the school has had the “local” teams and their varsity boys and girls teams both made it to the state playoffs.  Their boys’ team made it to the final eight of this year’s tournament and Pitts was very happy with that result.

“We are starting this from scratch and we still had a great year,” he continued.  “We take that as a positive sign and we are excited about that.  We feel like we can start competing for conference and state championships next year.  I expect a meteoric rise.”

Starting the first week of March, they will start having open gym that will run until the end of the summer.  The open gyms will run Monday through Friday from 4:30 to 7 p.m. This is to bring in tal-ent from around the county to work out with the players and coaches from QEA.

Over the last nine years, QEA’s national team has won three national championships and has almost 70 of their players go on to play Division I basketball. Pitts also stated over the last nine years the team has had a 100 percent graduation rate and a 100 percent college acceptance rate as well.

The school, a free public charter school, is now entered into open enrollment and is open to anyone. Pitts says he doesn’t want the focus to be just on athletics because they stress academics highly at QEA. They are currently Number 3 in the area for growth among charter schools. They are also a Top Five high school in the county as far as academics. There are currently 524 students at QEA from grades K-12.

Pitts says he wants to bring the new local team to the status of where their national team has been and he feels he will be able to do so quickly. Pitts also said he will have the first Coach Pitts basketball camp the first week of June. Interested par-ties should contact the school for more information at 336-744-7138.