The Salem Capitals and Salem Family YMCA’s youth basketball camps continued this week with a camp for third-sixth graders on Monday, July 11, through Friday, July 15 at the Capital Fieldhouse.
This was the third set of camps held by the Capitals and the YMCA. Two weeks ago, micro-camps for children as young as two, as well as a camp for kindergarten-second graders.
This camp being with the older children allowed for more focused basketball work than the previous iterations.
“They have the concept of dribbling down, passing down, being a team player. You can add harder words in like repetitions or mental toughness and they’ll start getting the concept. You can progress farther because you have these terms that can rotate their knowledge of basketball.”
Brock had campers working on shooting, passing and defense in evolving drills. First, they worked on simple dribbling, then more focused ball-handling with crossovers, passing and different speeds.
He was impressed with the skill level of many of the campers early on. In one defensive drill, the sprint out, campers’ times rivaled Brock’s own.
“We were teaching them cone drills that I do for my high school and I’m about to do with one of our players,” Brock said. “Drills that really require focus, they’re doing them at the very base level.”
For many of the 34 campers, it’s not just a chance to hone their developing basketball skills. It’s a chance to be on the court with some of the players they watched during the Capitals inaugural season.
One of those players, Scott Clough, sees the camps as a chance to give back to those kids that supported him and the Capitals.
“I see a bunch of these kids at all of our games,” Clough said. “We interact with them after the games, but to really have that time where we spend all day with them to give back and teach them things so that someday they can be playing basketball at a high level, the look on their faces when they’re out here, it’s cool.”
There is one more camp scheduled, this time for grades seven-nine, on July 25-29.