Welcome to Champions Combine Sports' Blog

It's great to be here and starting a blog for Champions Combine Sports aka CC Sports. This entry will provide you with an introduction to our company, history, philosophy, competitive advantages, and about our President and Director of Player Development, Derrick Wong. We'll also share with you what you can expect from our blog, so you can check back regularly to read our content and share it with your friends, colleagues, and other parents on the teams that you or your children play for.

CC Sports is a sports performance, player and skill development, and player advising company that is designed to provide a centralized hub of experience, education, research, and analytics driven training, coaching, mentorship, and guidance to the athletes we work with and the loved ones who take an interest in helping them achieve their goals. Whether you're an elite, Masters, adult, recreational, or youth level athlete who is trying to develop yourself into the best athlete your DNA and motivation enables you to become - there is a lot of information available on social media, internet, and specialist practitioners/coaches to process and distill into actionable plans. We take the guesswork and uncertainty out of it at CC Sports and help you to figure out the best way to improve your sport specific skills, sport IQ, sports performance ability, strength and conditioning, mental skills, and recovery. We believe in being a partner with you in your journey to become the best athlete you can be. Every athlete we work with, we form a partnership with you and those who support you, to ensure you are not only bought into what we're trying to implement with you, but that you understand the logic and rationale for why we're employing the tactics we recommend. We believe that the key to seeing lasting improvement is to buy-in into what you're doing and not only follow our programs and coaching plans, but believe in what you/we are doing.

CC Sports started as Champions Combine, a branding and promotions firm focused on capitalizing on the inate value and qualities of athlete's trying to play at the next level. CC Sports is a new iteration of Champions Combine and DSWAthletes, a sports performance and sport specific skill development company that trains athletes of all ages and levels. CC Sports is a reinvented vision of both companies with the aim of creating a streamlined and cost effective experience for athletes and their support systems to achieve their goals.

Our philosophy at CC Sports is about creating a centralized hub for all things sports, whether it be sports performance (i.e., strength and conditioning, nutrition, sleep, recovery, prehab, rehab, return to play, mental skills training, etc), the exercise physiology/biomechanics/kinesiology involved in practice and game performance, sport specific skill development, developing sports IQ, game film analysis and review, athletic and physical therapy oversight, etc. We understand that you may have subject matter experts to work with you in one or more of the areas listed, but without synergy and understanding of how all the different pieces fit together - the work you're doing for each of these aspects with different people who do not collaborate or consider what each person is doing may be overburdening the body and/or mind of the athlete. We believe that by using our experience and expertise in all these areas will allow us to ensure each of these aspects of being utilized in the most effective and efficient way possible to optimize your results. By helping you to review what you're doing in each area, we help to remove redunancy in what you're doing to not only keep your body feeling fresh, but to save you the time and money spent in addressing all of these areas in your day-to-day and long-term approach to development.

Our competitve advantage is that we have experience working with practitioner specialists and providing services in all these areas. We can provide all these services ourselves or directly provide services in one or more areas while overseeing each aspect to ensure you're working smarter, not just harder and longer by potentially doing similar things with multiple specialists who may not be aware of what the other specialists are doing with you.

Derrick Wong, MA, CSCS,*D is CC Sports' President and Director of Player Development. He's been at the helm of Champions Combine Sports since our founding and previously has been in similar roles with Champions Combine and DSWAthletes. He is also the Director of Performance for Acheev, a strength and conditioning mobile app, providing expert strength and conditioning programming specific to many different sports (i.e., soccer, ice hockey, track and field, endurance running, lacrosse, football, etc) to allow athletes from anywhere in the world to be able to access thoughtfully designed and programmed training plans across the various training cycles in an athlete's year (i.e., pre-season, general preparatory phase, in-season, playoffs, off-season, etc) for athletes to follow in an interactive platform on their phone or tablets with video demonstrations for all the exercises. Derrick will be an ice hockey assistant coach with V1 and head coach for V2 at Gonzaga College High School in Washington, DC for the all-boys school. He is also a PhD Candidate at George Mason University's College of Education and Human Development in Sports Organizational Leadership and Decision-making, Kinesiology, and Mixed Research Methods. His dissertation is exploring how to bridge the gap between policymakers, administrators, coaches, researchers, scientists, and student-athletes in sport leadership and organizational decision-making in elite and youth sports organizations to create a developmental system and approach to safeguard the well-being and development of athletes. Derrick also earned a Graduate Certificate in Science Communication at George Mason, Masters degree in exercise physiology and sport coaching at the University of Denver, and BA at Bowdoin College. Derrick is a Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach with Distinction from the National Strength and Conditioning Association and USA Hockey Advanced Level 4 Coach. He has also previously been the 14U Boys' VP and Director of Public Relations for the USA Hockey affiliate for New Hampshire, hockey coach for the USA Hockey New England Festival, and a USA Hockey Level 3 ice hockey referee working youth to midgets, juniors, and college hockey.

Derrick was previously an assistant coach for the 13U Pure (2011 birth year) Washington Little Capitals and one of the strength and conditioning coaches for all eight teams within the program, including the 11U to 18U Premier and 18U Elite Tier I AAA ice hockey teams. The 13U Pure WLC team were the 2025 Southeastern Districts' Runner-Ups (losing to the Vincent LaCavalier coached Florida Alliance team. The 13U Pure team beat the eventual Atlantic Youth Hockey League (AYHL) champions NJ Titans 5-3 in the round robin phase of the AY playoffs and finished 3rd in the playoffs, after going into the playoffs seeded 4th. Two of their forwards were in the top 5 of AYHL scoring at #2 (22-25-47 pts) and #5 (24-20-44 pts). The #1 overall forward in the 13U AY was 13-34-47 pts. 3 forwards were in the top 20 (#15, 18-14-32 pts). One defenseman was in the top 5 for defense scoring leaders (#9, 5-13-18 pts). 2 goalies were in the top 10 for goaltending leaders (#7 - 2.47 GAA, 603 minutes; #10 - 2.55 GAA, 452 minutes). The AY team record was 16-5-1. The team finished 42nd in the country with a 34-26-1 record and 299 goals for and 220 goals against playing against the top teams in the country with marquee wins against Top 25 teams (at the time WLC played them): NJ Avalanche, NJ Titans, Windy City Storm, Madison Capitols, Chicago Fury, Carshield, Woodbridge Wolfpack, Northern CT Nor'Easters, NJ Colonials).

Derrick was previously the Director of Sports Performance and Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for Team Maryland, an Affiliate S&C Coach for the USHL Clark Cup Champions Youngstown Phantoms and NAHL Roberton Cup Runner Up Maryland Black Bears. Derrick was a strength coach for the USA Hockey National 15 Player Development Camp in Buffalo, NY. He also has worked with Mike Macchioni and Northeast Sports Training and Rehabilitation (NEST) and Mike Boyle/Ken Whittier and Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning (MBSC). He's also been the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach for the George Mason University's ACHA national championship playoff qualifying (2020, playoffs cancelled due to COVID19) men's ice hockey team. Derrick was an Associate Coach and Head of Strength and Conditioning for the Troy Jr Eagles (Atlantic and Met Junior Hockey League, now the EHL), Jr Monarchs 14U and 16U Boys' Tier I AAA Head Coach, and CD Selects 13U Boys' Tier I AAA Head Coach. He's also been the Head Counselor and hockey coach at Heartland Hockey (owned by former NHLer and Olympian Steve Jensen), Baystate Hockey, and Camp Greylock. Derrick has also been a head coach for boys' soccer at the middle and high school level and head coach for indoor and outdoor track and field at the middle and high school level where he's coached all the events, coached boys' and girls' state championship teams, and individual state champions.

The blog at Champions Combine Sports will provide content relevant to the key aspects required for athletes to navigate sports performance, player and skill development, and the best ways to navigate working towards being the best athlete you can be.