St. Regis hosts boy's basketball camp

For two weeks, players were dribbling basketballs up and down the gym court in St. Regis this week and last as part of the boy's high school basketball camp. Passing, shooting and rebounding were only a few items on the agenda.

Coach Dan Park said that he had seven players show up during the first week, July 12 to July 16, and six players during the second week, July 19 and July 21. Park said that they can't work with the players come August 1 and so the camp fell in just at the right time.

"It's intended for incoming freshman through seniors and it's not mandatory so you're happy that any of that any of them come," Park said.

Park said that he was pleased that he had quite a few freshmen show up. He said that one sophomore and a couple of seniors also joined them.

"It was a pretty diverse group," Park said. "There were a few other people I thought might come, but a lot of the students have work also and can't make it."

Park said that the camp is especially important for the younger players as it gives them a taste of what the high school program is like.

"They're coming into high school and it may not be as physical in grade school, junior high, so we find that we need to go over some of our drills. The camp gets them acclimated with our program so when we go to run them in a full practice they already know what they're getting," Park said.

Park said that the other need for the camp is to get players out and thinking about the upcoming season.

"Some of them haven't even touched a basketball all summer," Park said, noting that the players were somewhat rusty.

Park said that a lot of what they work on in camp is teaching students different things that can work on in their own time, simple things that could improve their game if they take the time to work on it.

"We teach them a lot of things during camp that if they go out and work on their own they'll really improve," Park said. "We give them little things to help them improve in every aspect like jumping. You could be walking down the street and you jump off with this leg or that leg. These are things that can be trained, but things you don't necessarily have time to do in your regular practice."

Park said that for the most part all the work done at camp focused around the basics. He said that they worked a lot of free throws, moving around the basket, layups, dribbling, rebounding, defense and teamwork. Park said that because of numbers they couldn't work much on offense or playing two teams against each other. However, he was glad that the students got to play with everyone who showed up for the camp.

"The big think is that we rotate people and everybody plays with everybody," Park said. "This is important so that when you go to make a pass, you know your guy is going to be there."

Park said that by the end he had seen an improvement in the players and in their game despite the fact that they were a bit out of practice when the camp begin.

"They worked pretty hard," Park said. "I think some of them haven't played a lot of basketball and I did see an improvement. And seeing that helps me because it lets me know where they are and what I need to work on with them."