Ms. Rachel is known for teaching kids how to talk, sing, learn, and basically survive the chaos of childhood.
But now, she is trying something completely different. Basketball!
The popular children’s YouTube educator recently stepped onto the court with Chris Matthews, better known as Lethal Shooter, for his viral celebrity basketball series. And yes, the woman who spends her days teaching toddlers is now getting basketball lessons from one of the internet’s favorite shooting coaches.
Apparently, learning the alphabet was not enough.
Matthews traded in his signature trash talk for a more encouraging tone with Ms. Rachel, whose given name is Rachel Accurso. In the viral video, published on Wednesday, Sept. 9, Ms. Rachel wore her trademark pink T-shirt and denim overalls with mismatched sneakers while she made shots from inside the arc. She got especially excited after making a series of buckets from the free throw line and jumped up and down while Matthews gave her a high five.
“I tell kids ‘You can do hard things.’ I had to apply it to myself,” she said at the end of the video. “I’ve never played basketball, but when you have an amazing coach, Coach Chris, you can do anything.”
Matthews has built a reputation for working with celebrities and helping them improve their jump shots. His videos regularly turn famous faces into temporary basketball students.
This time, Ms. Rachel got the classroom treatment. Only this classroom had a basketball hoop.
Matthews has also had Tony Hawk, Dr. Dre and Master P as guests on his social media series. He is known as one of the top shooting coaches in professional basketball with Jaylen Brown, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Te’a Cooper among his clients.
At the time of publication, the Instagram reel of Ms. Rachel’s shootaround has 8.3 million views and the TikTok video has an additional 600,000 views.
The appearance also showed another side of Ms. Rachel’s personality. She was willing to laugh, learn, and look a little silly while trying something outside her usual lane.
That is probably the best part of the whole thing. Nobody expected Ms. Rachel to suddenly become Steph Curry.
The goal was simply to have fun and learn something new.
And if she keeps practicing, maybe the next lesson will be teaching toddlers how to say, “Nothing but net.”
Now that would be educational content worth watching.
