My Best Basketball Camp Experience

Who loves basketball camps? I love basketball camps. As a camp director and basketball trainer I love interacting with enthusiastic kids and teaching them the basketball skills and tricks I’ve picked up over the years. As a kid, I may have loved camp even more because I loooooove playing basketball, in any setting. And almost every basketball camp I went to as a kid I enjoyed, but there is one in particular that was my favorite, and it was the last basketball camp I ever attended as a player. Let me tell you about it.

In a city far away in a foregone era… actually it was Houston Texas about 14 years ago, but same difference… I had just completed my sophomore year of high school and had received some discouraging news from my high school coach at the end of the school year. He thought that some of the other players my age and younger were better than me at my position, and he didn’t believe I could be a huge asset to the team going forward. Basketball tryouts are in the fall, but he basically let me know that my spot was not guaranteed. In so doing, he actually inspired me to work on my game like never before.

My mom signed me up for a University of Houston summer basketball camp, and I was excited and a little nervous about going. I had actually never been to a college basketball camp before. I knew the competition was going to be good. And when I got there, my intuition was correct; there were a lot of good players. By this time, a lot of the guys my age (including me) were dunking and doing a lot of athletic things on the court. A lot of the guys were already Varsity players. But by the end of the week this camp helped me get my confidence back.

Hot Shot Champion

Woohooooo I won the camp Hot Shot Shootout and was named Hot Shot Champion. I got a T-shirt for it and wore it to play pickup basketball for years. One of the kids at the camp told me I was a pure shooter. That stuck with me because I had never been recognized for my shooting before. The rest of the summer I made it a point to work on my shooting and I did become a really good shooter. But this camp gave me the confidence that I could even be that. It was good to get around new players and coaches, show my stuff and be recognized by a different set of eyes.

Mr. Coachable

One of the things my high school coach told me was that I had a bad attitude. That was one of the reasons he wasn’t sure there was a spot for me going forward. There was a little bit of truth to this, but I wasn’t a rebellious kid. I was (and still am) a fierce competitor, and that always didn’t translate in the best of ways when I was a kid. I was never a kid who talked back to coaches or ignored instructions but I would show frustration with myself and teammates from time to time. Well at this camp, I won the Mr. Coachable Award. I got a T-shirt for this too! Shortly after my high school coach told me I had a bad attitude, I had a college coach tell me that I had a coachable attitude. This was great for my confidence as a basketball player going forward.

Team Runner-Up

Scrimmaging is a lot of times the most fun at camp. You always learn one or two good things, but kids love to scrimmage, and so did I. This camp split everybody up into teams that they kept for the entire week. It operated like a mini league with the playoffs being on the last day. This really helped me get my groove back. I was able to lead my team to the championship game where we lost a close game. But it was a great experience for me. My teammates looked at me like a leader and I got a chance to be a go-to-player, something that wasn’t the case on my high school team up to that point. Everybody said that if we would have won, that I would have gotten the Camp MVP award, which ended up going to the best player on the winning team. Whether it was true or not, hearing that meant a lot to me and boosted my basketball confidence back up to a good level. Later on I was able to continue my high school basketball career, and became a key player for my team my senior year. I was the only perimeter player on my team to receive All District Honors, and I eventually got to play college basketball. The confidence I received from this summer basketball camp I really believe had something to do with it.

I encourage all you young players to attend at LEAST one basketball camp this summer. You never know what you will find there. It could be an experience that you’ll remember for the rest of your life. Happy camping! In the remote chance you live in my town, come check out one of our Austin Basketball Camps.