A Closer Look at the Charlotte Royals AAU Program

Recently, NCPreps.com had a chance to catch up with Charlotte Royals 17s AAU Coach Sim Frazier. The Royals have been away from the AAU circuit for a few years, but have returned strong and living up to the Royals name!

Sim, how has the process been in bringing the Royals Brand back to travel basketball?

"It has been alot of work. By us not having a 16u team or any team to really feed into at all, it was all from scratch. So far, we have been very pleased with the early success we have had."

Talk about that success. We have been seeing the Charlotte Royals on Twitter. What tournaments have you won?

"Some of this success has taken us by surprise right now. We are 20-4 overall with wins in both live events we were in during the April live periods. We won the On the Radar Hoops and Phenom Grassroots events respectively. We also played very well in the Nike Memorial Day Classic by knocking off two Adidas sponsored teams."

Thats awesome! Who have been your top players so far?

"I pride myself on always having balanced teams. There is no one guy you can take away and say you will beat us for sure. In the post, we have Nico Payne (6'8) from Concord First Assembly, Riley Jones (6'10) from Lake Norman, Jacob Skidmore (6'7) and Josh Helton (6'8) both from Kings Mountian. They all had their times to shine.

Our guards are Marcus Thomas (6'3) from Independence, Brett Carter (6'3) from SouthLake Christian, Jordan McKenzie (6'1) from J.M. Robinson, and Brandon Reeves (6'4) from South Pointe. There have been some times where they have had to lead us to a win."

It sounds you have alot of guys contributing there. Where will you guys play in July? Have you made any changes to your roster as most teams do around this time?

"In July, we will play in the Phenom Champion Classic (Greensboro, NC), Peach State Summer Showcase (Augusta, GA) and AAU Super Showcase Gold (Louisville, KY).

We haven't made a ton of changes, but we have added 6'3 guard Myles McGregor of Davidson Day. He is a really good player the has some D1 offers from a few schools in NC and VA."

Nice! Good luck to you the rest of the summer! Glad to see the Royals back to having some success.