I have been watching a lot of Long Island HS basketball games this winter, both girls & boys, and I am noticing that our HS Varsity athletes are both very dedicated to this game, and missing a lot of important and easy to master skills and I started wondering why.
Basketball is a game where a player can improve their skills on their own. My father used to say that you don’t need a group of other players, or even a hoop, to improve your skills. Just a ball and a flat surface and you can become a better player.
I watched a varsity game being played by two good teams and I was surprised that one of the key players in this game, a starter and probably the 3rd best player on the team, could not take more than one or two dribbles with her left hand before having to reverse direction and dribble with her strong (right) hand. She turned the ball over a few times while dribbling with her right hand while going to her left. Again, a very strong Long Island Girls basketball team. The 3rd best player in the entire school. And she struggled with a skill we teach to 4th graders at camp.
Please understand that I am not denigrating that particular student-athlete, but rather it is a comment on the lack of emphasis on basic fundamentals. When we send our campers out to stations, you can hear the groan from them. Stations are the vegetables in the camp meal where our campers desire the cheeseburgers (3 on 3 League), fries (Camp Games) and shakes (Options!). But players who want to get better need their vegetables (Stations) because it is there that the learning takes place.
The work ethic that is learned at All American Basketball Camp translates very well to their schoolwork and to their later work life.
When our expert coaches, most of whom have varsity-level coaching experience, gather the campers around them to begin stations, they begin to build the skills and try to inspire the campers to WANT to learn. The coaches demonstrate the skills and then watch as the campers put those skills into practice. The coaches then repeat the process with the rest of the day’s skills. My dad credited his college coach, Joe Lapchick, with this method of imparting knowledge to kids learning to play basketball: Show them, demonstrate it, let them do it. Then, at the end, tie the “lesson” together so that it makes sense to everybody.
We believe in our process that can help your child get ready…to get ready to be a better player. And, as an added benefit, the work ethic that is learned at camp translates very well to their schoolwork and to their later work life. The benefit of focused hard work helps children feel better about themselves as they recognize that things they didn’t do so well on Monday are now skills they’re better at on Friday. And if they come back for another week, the self-confidence continues to grow.
So, sometimes, eating your veggies can become something our campers choose to do as we use our experience to demonstrate how those veggies help our campers to GROW!
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