Ready to win
Kayla Revier, right practices proper defense against Diamond LaDeaux at the Trotter basketball camp on Thursday.
Diamond LaDeaux, right, drives the ball against Felicia Earhart, left, at the Trotter basketball camp.
Tia Thompson, right, practices close out defense against Felicia Earhart at the Trotter basketball camp.
It was all about paying attention to detail on Thursday at the Plains girls basketball camp.
As former head coach from Florence, Lee Zieler, explained the concept of close out defense, he wasn't about to let any of the current and future Plains Trotters basketball players settle for something short of perfection.
It was all about paying attention to detail on Thursday at the Plains girls basketball camp.
As former head coach from Florence, Lee Zieler, explained the concept of close out defense, he wasn't about to let any of the current and future Plains Trotters basketball players settle for something short of perfection.
Sometimes individually and sometimes talking to the whole group, he and his son and daughter, who were there assisting him moved the legs and arms of the girls until he was sure that their hands could reach for any shot and their stance could catch up with every dribble.
It was an intensity from a group of girls that enjoyed playing basketball with each other and are hungry to revolutionize a girl's basketball team that has struggled in recent years into a new highly competitive winning basketball program.
"We think we can change it. We don't want to be stuck in a rut that we have been," says junior Diamond LaDeaux who was excited to come to basketball camp to continue practicing her skill set.
"I wanted to practice all my skills all year long, so I can be a better basketball player," explained LaDeaux, and according to her coach Richard Griffin summer camps are the perfect place for that.
"It's important to go to camps in general. Any camp in the state of Montana and beyond is good to go to. If you look at the teams that compete at the state tournament every year, they play 20 or 30 games every time. That's like a whole other basketball season for them," said Coach Griffin. "We're trying to get that implemented here and we're having a really successful time."
It was the first basketball camp hosted by the new head coach Griffin and he also had plenty of other help including his father and Zieler who have upwards of 100 years of basketball coaching experience between them. And with all that experience came a lot of drills, practice and little rest for the team who definitely got some serious work in during the four days.
Starting on Monday the coaches just taught them the fundamentals such as ballhandling, passing and shooting. On Tuesday they hit more advanced drills, then the next day they switched to defense orientated drills that really exercised the mental toughness of the girls and then the last day they worked on more advance defensive techniques.
According to the coach it was a tough four days for the girls.
"I bet each one of these girls ran the court a few hundred times," said Coach Griffin. "They were tired by the time they were done."
Along with holding a summer basketball camp Coach Griffin has also taken the team out to different tournaments and before they held the camp they competed in a tournament at Darby where the team won two games, lost three and competed well in all five of them getting the coaching staff really excited for next year's varsity team.
"It gave Matt (Diehl, the assistant basketball coach) and I a good feeling for next year," says Coach Griffin.