New Freeport sport facility means a permanent home for Rising Stars

More than a dozen basketball players who passed through Rising Stars’ programs adorn a mural at the nonprofit’s newly opened facility in Freeport.

“That's like full circle,” executive director Daniel Gimpel said Tuesday, pointing to a black-and-white halftone image of Evan Conti in a Quinnipiac University jersey, his eyes focused in the distance. After playing with Rising Stars, Conti played college basketball, then professionally in Israel and he’s now an assistant head basketball coach at St. Michael’s College in Vermont.

“He was in third grade and then we followed him through to college,” Gimpel said.

Throughout its 25-year history, the organization has operated out of various schools but until now, it didn’t have its own facility. After a nearly two-year, $2.5 million renovation, it now occupies 16,000 square feet of the former National Guard Armory building in Freeport, sharing the building with the Ready Set Grow Learning Academy, a child care facility that opened in 2021. The athletic center has two high school regulation-sized basketball courts, two fitness rooms, a classroom and a sports medicine room. 

In 2019, New York State turned the then-vacant armory building over to the Village of Freeport. Newsday previously reported that the organization will pay the village more than $10,000 a month to use the space.

Gimpel said its programs have about 500 participants — roughly 300 boys and 200 girls. The organization offers year-round training and fields travel teams. Though it’s focus is on basketball, the space will be used for volleyball and other activities in the future, he said.

“One of the best things about what we do is the diversity we have in the program,” Gimpel, 48, said in an interview. ”You have kids from all different walks of life … they get to learn from each other and be part of a different experience and learn how others grow up.”

The lessons of teamwork and camaraderie teach children values for the rest of their lives, he said.

"It teaches you hard work. It teaches you commitment ... that you're also responsible to your teammates," Gimpel said. "The team is bigger than just you."

Rising Stars focuses on more than the game, offering classes and scholarships to private schools, he said.

“The only way to be part of this program is if you do well in school,” Gimpel said.

One of its programs teaches financial literacy to middle school and high school students. Christopher DiLeonardo, education development officer for Jovia Financial Credit Union, one of the Rising Stars sponsors, is teaching classes “to educate the youth about different paths to financial literacy” including credit scores, budgeting and protecting oneself online.

“It's things that they're not learning in the classrooms currently,” DiLeonardo said. The classes are free for kids in the Rising Stars program and aim for “the kids to be financially literate by the time they graduate high school.”

In an interview, Conti, 30, said the program helped prepare him for his life and career through its dedicated mentoring.

“Sports has a really special way of preparing you for anything that comes in your way in life,” Conti said. "I don't think there's anything else that can prepare you for those kind of high pressure situations.”