How the Gillion Brothers Built One of High School Basketball's Fastest-Rising Programs

This is the final installment of our seven-part series on Northern Virginia’s Gillion Academy, which is among the country’s premiere national high school basketball programs after only its first year of existence.

Earlier pieces in the series included a feature on "Gentle Giant" Marcis Ponder, a profile on Mississippi State commit Willie Burnett III, a story on sophomore guard Aaron Bryant, a look Inside Gillion’s Grind Session Run, how Brionne Gillion’s entrepreneurial drive and family roots helped build one of Florida’s most influential high school basketball platforms, and The Bewley Twins rise through the Gillion Brothers pipeline and their fight for NCAA eligibility.

A New Beginning in Northern Virginia

When Darrance Gillion moved to Northern Virginia in 2014, he began homeschooling his oldest daughter while his wife, an attorney with the United States Coast Guard, started working on Capitol Hill.

He spent his two-year sabbatical away from the secondary school environment as a stay-at-home dad while getting acclimated to the hoops landscape of his new surroundings.

“The Washington, DC, Maryland and Northern Virginia area is a haven for the game,” said Darrance. “There’s exceptional talent here and some of the best youth and high school competition in the country. Looking at the elite AAU programs like Team Takeover and DC Assault, I wanted to bring my experiences and resources together and expand on what my brothers and I had already built in Florida. That’s when Team Breakdown DMV took root.”

Those two years away from teaching, school administration and coaching provided the bandwidth for him to build up his own local hoops network.

Inspired by the documentary Waiting For Superman, he was hired as a Life Skills Counselor at The SEED Public Charter School of Washington, DC, the nation’s first tuition-free, public charter boarding school.

A Different Vision for Education

“Working at SEED changed my whole perspective on education,” said Darrance. “99% of the students go on to four-year colleges. They come in underperforming and eventually begin to excel, then far surpass what they were previously told they were capable of. No matter a student’s background, they can succeed when they’re surrounded by educators who pour their heart and soul into them.”

With the Team Breakdown DMV program growing, coupled with the paradigm shift in his approach to secondary education, he had an epiphany.

“Our education system is creating dependent learners,” said Darrance. “I had this idea of creating a school that would develop independent learners and combine year-round elite basketball training, coaching and competition, both AAU and scholastic, with strong academics.”

That conceptual frame was pushed further along when the NCAA instituted its transfer portal in 2022.

“With the portal, college coaches weren’t nearly as concerned with recruiting high school student-athletes the way they used to,” Darrance said. “That literally changed overnight. I wanted to create the best of both worlds - a space that would produce great scholars and athletes, players that were bigger, smarter, stronger and, once they were done, ready to contribute immediately on the major college level.”

Recruiting the Family

With the vision firmly locked in, he set about recruiting his brothers.

The initial building block was Zach, who had previously worked on the staff at Samford University in Alabama and was, at that time, an assistant at Chicago State where brother Gerald was the head coach.

Darrance and Zach had long been discussing the possibility of building their own gym. Zach had been commuting during the summer months from Chicago to DC to provide training for some of the area’s elite players through the brothers new entity, The Gillion Basketball Academy, a hoops seminary/training institute that incorporated and built upon the previous elements they’d long established back in Florida.

“We were renting out gyms to train athletes and business was booming,” said Darrance.

Building Gillion Academy

Before they could open the school they’d envisioned, complete with numerous basketball courts, classrooms, computer labs, a large space for weights and workout machines, audiovisual equipment, administrative offices and a gathering place for team meals, they needed an actual physical space to call home.

In 2023, Darrance found exactly what they’d been looking for, a vacant 12,000-foot former book warehouse in an industrial corridor of Springfield, Virginia.

“Darrance approached me and said, ‘Remember that gym we were talking about building? It’s gonna happen,’” said Zach.

The Gillion brothers, along with a group of investors, put down the seed money to get their future brick-and-mortar home in motion.

They all contributed either financing, planning, business expertise, or a combination of the three.

Published author Cyril, Brionne from his resort in the Dominican Republic, and Damel from his academic perch as a tenured Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania were all consulted. As was Gerald, who was leaving Chicago State to be an assistant at Long Island University and is now an assistant at Florida State.

Brionne, who took a sabbatical from the day-to-day of his Caribbean business interests, took Gerald’s place on the LIU staff. And of course, there was Kenny, who was teaching and running the national travel team at West Oaks Academy in Orlando.

The Gillion brothers transformed an empty warehouse in Northern Virginia into their vision for a basketball academy. | The Gillion Academy

Darrance himself ponied up approximately $80,000 of his own personal savings.

The timing worked out perfectly for Zach. When brother Gerald resigned as the head coach at Chicago State to work on Rod Strickland’s staff at LIU, he was ready for his own next opportunity.

With his son Wesley Cardet, whom he coached while on the Samford and Chicago State staffs, transferring to Providence for his senior year and his wife buried deep in her medical school residency in Tallahassee, Zach spent every weekend in August, September and October driving from Chicago to Northern Virginia to help transform the warehouse space.

“I’m a night owl, so I’d train players during the day, catch some sleep on Darrance’s couch and then work on putting the gym together from 8:00pm to 5:00am.”

When his wife began medical school, their original plan was to settle in Orlando after she’d completed her studies. But that was altered when she took a trip to Northern Virginia in November of 2023 during her final year of residency.

“Her first time walking into the gym and seeing what we’d done, she looked at me and said, ‘You always said you wanted your own gym. Now you’ve got one. Let’s make the best of it,’” said Zach.

Gillion Academy officially opened in the fall of 2024. An initial enrollment of 24 students fielded a middle school and local varsity prep team composed of one postgrad playing alongside ninth through twelfth graders.

When an adjacent wine storage business cleared out, the Gillions acquired that space as well, an additional 6,000 square feet, knowing they were ready to field an elite travel squad and more than double their enrollment.

Convincing the Coaches

That’s when Darrance called Kenny, who’d built a powerhouse at West Oaks.

He persisted with a simple pitch: “We’ve invested our time and talents at all of these other schools to educate students. We’ve poured our passion into elevating the lives of young men and worked hard for everyone else. It’s only right that you come down here and do it for your own namesake. This is our calling.”

“Our parents had always preached that family was the strongest institution,” said Kenny. “And the thought process was, whatever we’d accomplished individually in terms of our success, we’ll more than double that working together. I was like, ‘OK, when do you need me to be there?’”

With Kenny locked in, they were acutely aware of the importance of getting West Oaks assistant JP Gajardo on board.

“I was born and raised in Miami, and the Gillion family practically raised me,” said Gajardo. “I’ve been around and coached by them my whole life.”

While studying at the University of Miami, he coached with Team Breakdown while also serving as an assistant at Miami Senior High, his alma mater. Upon graduating in 2020, he joined Kenny’s West Oaks staff.

Gajardo’s involvement in launching the Gillion national travel program was deemed critical because, outside of his talents as a coach, motivator, mentor and administrator, he excels at one of the most valuable aspects of running a successful organization - cultivating and maintaining excellent relationships.

“This thing wasn’t going to go without JP on board,” said Kenny. “We had an outstanding nucleus of players in our Team Breakdown program and JP had been coaching those kids, and had outstanding relationships with their families, for years.”

“If we were going to approach these parents about sending their kids to play with us for their senior year, they would automatically trust that, with JP there, their children were going to be looked after properly.”

Kenny told Gajardo that he wasn’t taking no for an answer, that his participation was critical. But he also knew that in order for that to happen, Gajardo’s wife and young daughter would need a full court press on the recruiting front as well.

“That was a delicate conversation with his wife because we envisioned them as the host family who the kids would be living with,” said Kenny. “We had to make sure that they’d be comfortable, staying in a nice place with enough space and privacy for them and their daughter. It wasn’t going to work if his wife wasn’t comfortable.”

“We were in a good situation living in the heart of Miami,” said Gajardo. “My wife’s a Radiologist and had a great job at Baptist Hospital. So stepping away from all of that for me to help build a program from scratch at a new school in the DC area was going to be a huge sacrifice.”

“But she’s a grinder. She believes in my dreams of becoming a college head coach one day, so she stepped out on faith. And from my perspective, when Kenny decided to make the move and told me, ‘You’re coming with us,’ it was a no-brainer.”

Winning Over the Players

Next up was the group of Florida boys that would make up the core of the national team.

Marcis Ponder, Jaden Joseph, Aaron McGee, Willie Burnett III and Travis Triplett had been playing together since they were 14 years old, winning two national championships on the New Balance summer circuit with Team Breakdown.

“Marcis lived with me and my wife during his junior year at West Oaks and he was already like, ‘Coach, wherever you’re going, I’m going,’” said Kenny. “He never wavered, saying, ‘If ya’ll say I need to go to the moon, I’m down.’”

Willie Burnett III, Marcis Ponder, Aaron McGee, Jayden Joseph — A quartet of Florida recruits – Willie Burnett III, Marquis Ponder, Aaron McGee and Jayden Joseph – became the foundation of the first Gillion Academy team. | The Gillion Academy

Kenny and Gajardo approached the families with full transparency. They laid out why they were leaving West Oaks, the freedom and power behind the opportunity to build their own school and program from scratch, along with the academic component that Darrance was instituting as Gillion’s Head of School.

“The educational part is phenomenal,” said Gajardo. ‘When I was playing at Miami Senior High, I was not being prepared for college when I got to the University of Miami. At Gillion, it’s about producing great players as well as motivated, independent learners.”

“We preach and live by a family code,” said Kenny. “I told them they were a part of this family and that we’d love to have them. I laid out the basketball and academic advantages. And I told them that I wanted them to come, but we didn’t need them to come. The opportunity was there for them if they wanted it.”

Burnett, Joseph and McGee were in from the jump, with their parents repeating similar versions of, “We want our son here at home, but if this is best to better prepare him for college, we’ll allow it.”

“I didn’t want to leave Florida, but coach Kenny and I believed in one another and I felt like I needed to go with him,” said Burnett.

His parents fully agreed.

“It was a hard decision to let him leave, but coach Kenny was the factor,” said his dad, Willie Burnett, Jr. “He loves my son, he knows his game, and he knows what’s right for him. He’s a great coach, a great person, and Willie loves him back.”

Triplett originally thought he’d stay behind and finish up his senior year in Florida. But the other guys eventually wore him down, convincing him that he needed to come along as well.

Another beneficial factor working on their behalf in the Gillion's recruitment of the Florida kids was Kenny’s wife, Diane.

She provided an extra layer of trust as a mother figure that the parents had a strong relationship with and could easily talk to. But just as important was that she was also a secret weapon as it relates to basketball.

As the founder of the Orlando-based Showtime Ballers AAU program, and one of the very few women in the elite amateur summer space, she has her own sparkling resume and track record of producing NBA talent from the state of Florida. Among them is current Detroit Pistons forward Paul Reed.

An assistant coach on the Gillion staff as well, Diane and Kenny are often referred to as the hoops version of Beyonce and Jay-Z.

The First Season

In their first run as a national travel team this year, Gillion Academy advanced to the Elite Eight of the Grind Session World Championships. They ended their successful campaign with a 76-67 loss to Fort Lauderdale’s Prolific Prep, a squad that was routinely ranked among the very best in the country all season.

The seniors graduated last month, with Ponder, Burnett, Joseph, Triplett and McGee already enrolled in summer school classes at Florida State, Mississippi State, Florida A&M, LIU and Arkansas State respectively.

“Playing for coach Kenny and his brothers, especially this last year at Gillion, has been a great experience,” said Joseph. “In Miami as a freshman, scoring was my main focus. But over the last few years, I learned to be more versatile as a point guard. A true floor general controls the pace of the game and distributes the ball. Buying into that wasn’t difficult because of the talent I was playing with and the chemistry we had.”

In learning to see the bigger picture with Team Breakdown and at Gillion, Joseph, who had offers from the likes of Ole Miss and Oregon, chose to play his college ball at Florida A&M.

“Playing at FAMU is the best place for my game to develop,” said Joseph. “There aren’t many better role models than head coach Charlie Ward in terms of his leadership and accomplishments. He won a Heisman Trophy as a quarterback at Florida State and hooped at the highest level as an NBA point guard for over ten years. I can’t wait to learn from him and see what I have to do to get to where he got.”

He’s already comfortable with the workload of his Academic Success and Anthropology summer school classes.

“The curriculum at Gillion prepared me for college and showed me how to be independent,” said Joseph. “I learned a lot over the past year, in the classroom and on the court. That’s helped to make my college transition pretty smooth.”

He’ll have a familiar face and good friend nearby in Tallahassee with Ponder playing at Florida State.

“Marcis is right down the street, and that’s my boy,” said Joseph. “I’m excited for our first game versus Florida State. But Marcis ain’t gonna be my boy in that game.”

The Future Is Already Here

Losing such an array of talent to graduation might make some schools take a step back. But the Gillions don't see that happening.

“Our performance this year was the worst case scenario,” said Kenny. “Next year, and every year thereafter, the sky’s the limit.”

Along with key returning reserves Angelo Cunningham and Aaron Bryant among others, a new crop of talent is already in the building, playing with Team Breakdown this summer.

Among those coming in to help fortify the roster are Alex Alexander, a highly regarded 6-foot-10 sophomore power forward from Texas who already holds scholarship offers from Florida State, Missouri, Oklahoma State, TCU and Mississippi State. Isaac Smith, a touted 6-foot-5 sophomore from Virginia will be a new addition as well.

6-foot junior point guard Aidan Clark, with offers from Boston College, NC State and UMASS, is another Texan who’ll be suiting up for the Lions next season. 6-foot-5 senior guard Sean Nix comes in from North Carolina, along with fellow Class of 2027 big man Moshae Ward, who hails from California. That’s just to name a few.

“People may look at us as a one-hit wonder, but we’re not going below what we achieved last season,” said Kenny. “We’re not new to this. We’ve been doing it for years.”

JP Garjado has returned to his home in Miami with his wife and daughter to maintain Team Breakdown’s presence in the Sunshine State.

“We’re already working on our Breakdown roster for the spring and summer of 2027,” said Gajardo. “I’ll be traveling throughout Florida to build relationships with kids and parents, players that I’ve already scouted and put eyes on. I’ll also be watching kids from all over the country on film that we have access to on various networks like NFHS and Synergy.”

Assuming the new role of house parent shared by the out of state players at the residence in Mount Vernon, not far from George Washington’s former estate, will be assistant coach TJ Sapp.

Sapp, a Team Breakdown alum who played his college ball at Clemson and Murray State prior to becoming an assistant at his alma mater and the head coach at Northeast High School in Fort Lauderdale, was on the Gillion staff last season.

This past weekend, Team Breakdown competed on the New Balance circuit in St. Louis, then packed their contingent of 35 people into two large Ford Transit vans for the three-hour drive to Memphis on Sunday.

Before their final summer tournament games begin this upcoming Saturday, they’ll spend their week in Memphis working out, practicing and bonding. One visit is scheduled for the Lorraine Motel, the National Civil Rights Museum, an American landmark forever etched into the national memory due to the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King.

That’s par for the course at Gillion Academy, where Head of School Darrance Gillion and his brothers, all passionate educators and coaches, set out to change the landscape of what an elite prep basketball program looks like, what it encompasses, and how it can change the trajectory of one’s life.

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