Rusch Skills Academy Sees Unforseen Growth

Rusch Skills Academy saw unforeseen growth in 2022, but it all started with an unforeseen injury of their lead trainer, Mason Rusch. 

 Mason grew up in Kentucky, where he would have an incredible high school basketball career, scoring over 2,000 varsity career points and shattering his high school’s scoring record by his junior season.

During the summer of his junior year of high school, he and his family moved to Clayton, NC, where he would finish out at Clayton High School. Mason, being the talented point guard that he was, had a handful of offers to play in college once his season concluded at Clayton.

He landed at a small university in Kentucky called Asbury University. During his freshman year at Asbury, in the winter of 2020, Mason had to undergo surgery due to a knee injury, forcing him to medical-redshirt his freshman season. He wouldn’t fully recover until the season was over in the spring of 2021.

During that summer, he worked hard to get his body back into the shape that it was in pre-surgery. By the fall of 2021 Mason was ready to lace up again.

He played a full season for the Eagles but continued to battle new injuries throughout the year. Mason told us, “I had a difficult yet fulfilling season at Asbury.

Yes, the season had its’ ups and downs, but I learned so much about myself and built relationships with my teammates that will last a lifetime!” Mason decided it would be best for his career to leave Asbury and play somewhere closer to home, so he entered the NCAA transfer portal in the Spring of 2022.

As offers began to come, his excitement grew, but he didn’t know what would happen next. During May of 2022, as he was preparing to commit to Guilford College, Mason re-injured his knee again, playing in an open gym with other collegiate players.

He couldn’t figure out what he had done, but with his track record, he knew this wasn’t good. He took some time to pray about it and decided it wasn’t worth it to keep playing.

He called Coach Palombo (Head Coach of Guilford College), and gave him the unfortunate news. In a recent interview with Mason, he said, “After I called Coach Palombo to give him the news, I was pretty upset about everything. 

Thankfully, while everything looked to be going wrong in my life and my playing days were coming to an end, God had other things in store for me.

I had started doing some basketball training out of my church gym during the summer of 2021 and knew I wanted to do it again during the summer of 2022, but I had no clue what I would like.” He decided to name his training “Rusch Skills Academy.” Mason started off that summer in May only working with five players.

After a lot of hard work with those five players and by word of mouth, he had tripled his clientele base in just one month, working with up to 15 players per week. Mason said that by the end of July, Rusch Skills Academy was nearing 25 players in their academy. The in-person training wasn’t the only thing that was growing though. 

On Instagram, Rusch Skills Academy started off the summer with only three-hundred followers. After a lot of hard work in their marketing and traction from all the local athletes, the Rusch Skills Academy’s Instagram platform grew to accumulate well over one thousand followers by the end of the summer.

This is not including their followers from Twitter, Facebook, or TikTok. According to their analytics, they are reaching on average, two-hundred and fifty thousand accounts per month, according to Rusch Skills Academy’s media director.

He told us that this was all done through their organic marketing. An unforeseen injury in the lead trainer, Coach Mason’s life turned into unforeseen growth for Rusch Skills Academy.

Rusch Skills Academy is going to continue to grow.

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