COMO Shootout teams up with LearnYou to prepare athletes for college

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

While the annual COMO Shootout is a familiar event for high school basketball programs across the state of Missouri, this year's experience for those athletes looked a little different. Not only did 23 Varsity and JV teams get the opportunity to compete on the court, they also got the chance to learn about the ever-changing world of college athletics.

For the first time, the COMO Shootout teamed up with LearnYou, a non-profit organization that provides educational resources to young athletes, to offer workshops and a panel discussion to teach student-athletes about the realities of playing sports after high school. The workshops offered at the event addressed topics like the recruiting process, best practices for social media and rest and recovery. Saturday's panel discussion featured professional athletes, a college athlete, a sports agent and a coach, who all talked about the challenges and opportunities of playing college sports in an effort to better prepare student-athletes for the experience.

"We're just trying to find a way to educate our young men about what it means to go to the next level and the challenges that they do have to face to get there," Cray Logan, the organizer of the COMO Shootout and head coach of Hickman High School's boys basketball program, said. "There's a lot of adversities that they are not aware of, and so, we're looking for people who have already gone through those experiences to teach those things."

"We really want them to dream big, but we want to also make sure that they have the proper education to understand how to put pieces to the puzzle of their dreams, so they know if it's worthwhile to execute it or if it's a dream that they need to do in another capacity," Amand Hardiman, Principal Founder of LearnYou, said. "My hope is that they're able to really build confidence in themselves to really start to see the realities of what is real for their lives."

To learn more about LearnYou or how to support the organization, you can find more information on their website.