My Week On the Brink - Monday

This week I'm driving to Knoxville every day for the one week of the summer I dread - basketball camp week. Basketball camp is a necessary evil for basketball coaches across the country. The reason is simple - easy money. There are lines of kids who want to spend a week of their summer playing hoops and a line of parents ready to cipher their kids off to anyone else. They pay big bucks for the week in a deal that works out well for them (cheap baby-sitting) and us (summer stipend).

What is there to dread? Basketball camps tend to be pretty dull affairs. Most camps are for players in their middle school years who lack the basic fundamentals. While it is vital to teach these basics, it is also boring. I have taught the same footwork station at this particular camp at least a dozen times, five or six times a day. It is like Groundhog's Day (which happens to be my friend Glenn's favorite movie...weird) without the Sonny and Cher.

Rather than endure the week alone, I'm going to take you, the reader, deep inside the workings of a rising 4th-6th grade basketball camp. In the spirit of John Feinstein's classic A Season on the Brink about a season of Indiana Hoosier basketball, I bring you My Week On the Brink at basketball camp.

After an easy hour & forty-five minute drive to the sweet sounds of Scott McClellan's audio book, I arrived for Monday's camp session. The first day of basketball camp is the easiest day unless you are in charge. I'm not in charge this week - that responsibility belongs to my coaching mentor Elliott Stroupe. In many ways, he is the Bobby Knight of our Week on the Brink. He is a veteran coach in Knoxville, a stubborn, set-in-his-ways, my-way-or-highway kind of coach that doesn't put up with much from administrators, fellow coaches, referees or parents. He would have been run out of town long ago except for two things - he can really coach and he is great with kids. Coach Stroupe's Monday is a hectic one of organization, tweaking and decisions. He spent most of today's lunch walking around the cafeteria making sure nobody was eating alone while the rest of us coaches enjoyed our stale tacos and soggy corn.

Back to my easy day, the rest of the coaching staff spends most of Monday waiting around for the organizer to make decisions. Who belongs in which group? How much time will we need now that we are behind schedule? Where are the t-shirts? Who is this kid that just showed up at 11:30 in a "Computer Camp" shirt? These types of decisions belong to one man and it isn't me. He is the Decider. I am the Follower. It pays less to be the Follower, but it is a much easier gig.

The morning began with about 30 minutes of "knockout" (a classic basketball camp game that every kid knows, expects and loves) while we waiting for stragglers and late registries. We finally get together around 9:15 to go over introductions and camp basics. Having worked so many of these camps, I can finish just about every sentence out of Coach Stroupe's mouth. Every year, for some reason only he knows, he explains how the gym is air-conditioned using a "geo-thermal tap." Every year. Why? Beats me.

From introductions we enter into the evaluation stage of camp. This is where things get good. We try to group kids by ability so there is an A group (best players) through F group (young kids with no clue). Dreams are shattered by 10:00 a.m. at basketball camp when kids realize that they are not making the A group...or the B group...or the C group. Parents who paid $150 for their kid to have improved self-esteem got ripped off.

Picking groups takes forever. There are lots of little considerations we try to take into account, like not having one girl in a group or one 5th grader, but there is no making everyone happy. Coach Stroupe will have emails and phone messages tonight about how Jimmy wants to be in Tony's group. Again, there are advantages to working camp rather than running camp.

Finally, groups are picked and camp can really begin. The heart of any good basketball camp is the learning stations. The campers come to play games and make friends, but the value is in the stations. As a coach, this is easily the most fun part of the day as I get to impart my knowledge to eager learners.

Okay, there are only about 5 eager learners. There are about 45 campers who tolerate the stations to get to the games and contests. The other 10 campers goof off through the stations and can ruin them.

My station this week is Perimeter Moves to the Basket. The kids all picture a bunch of And1 moves like they seem from The Professor and Skip To My Lou, but their inability to dribble twice without looking down at the ball limits our ability to do freestyle moves. Instead, we worked today on getting low to breeze past defenders. I mentioned Paul Pierce's ability to drive past Laker defenders because he gets low. They stared at me with blank looks. So much for my "Be Like Paul Pierce" theme for the week.

After stations, it is time for lunch. I am a sucker for free food and always put too much food on my plate. Don't worry - it all gets eaten, but I am useless for the rest of the day. The coaches spend lunch venting about which kids are already driving them crazy, but also which ones have promise or are just nice kids. We laughed today about "PIFers" who are killing our drills; PIFers are Paid In Full kids who are terrible, but, well, paid in full.

Post-lunch starts with a lesson from Coach Stroupe about how to shoot an off-handed lay-up. This is Coach at his best - teaching impressionable youngsters the basic skills of the game. Unlike some coaches who can breakdown every offense or defense known to man, but cannot teach the fundamentals in an understandable way, Coach has the volunteer shooter slowly taking baby steps on his way to properly shooting a proper lay-up. Within 5 minutes, the kid is jumping off the proper foot and using his left-hand to throw the ball off the glass. Coach Stroupe is not a miracle worker (he ain't no miracle man) so the kid is not making the left-handed lay-ups yet, but he is well on his way.

We break back into groups to work on these lay-ups for a while before finally playing some actual games. You might think this would be the best part of the day for coaches - wrong. The good side of the games is that we mostly just sit back and call an occasional foul, so it is pretty relaxing. Why aren't we giving instructions on proper plays and such? At 1:00, the campers just want to play and not listen to us anymore. Today I stopped the action to explain how a simple screen away from the ball would get someone open and start an offense, but it was only used once by a kid who in all likelihood just ran into someone on accident.

The games are usually 3 on 3 or 4 on 4 in the half court. Running full court is a recipe for disaster as the worst players never touch the ball and kids quit running as soon as they get tired. It is camp, after all, why push yourself? We play 3 on 3 with no dribbles to teach cutting (which works) and screening (see previous paragraph). Once we allow them to dribble again, all the cutting is out the window. My favorite campers are the ones who dribble just for the thrill of it. They are not going anywhere with the ball - no purpose or rhyme to their dribbling. They often go straight backwards with it. They don't care. They just want to have the ball for a while and feel like a real basketball player. God bless 'em.

Camp winds down with final remarks from all the coaches before we hand out candy bars to contest winners and Campers of the Day (the kids who tried hardest or did something especially admirable). I get competitive about these talks and want mine to be the best. Today, I busted out Neil Armstrong, JFK and Lil' Jon in my closing remarks about getting low to get to the basket. Not bad, huh? I'm already thinking about tomorrow's talk. I'm thinking some Sun Tzu wisdom or perhaps Plato's Allegory of the Cave.

The day is done and the coaches make a mad dash for the door. I have mastered the "I'm in a hurry to get somewhere" post-camp walk to avoid talking to parents. It is not that I don't want to talk to them, it is, well, I don't want to talk to them. Picture a bunch of country club moms and dads with cell phones against their ears wanting to find out what their kid can do to make the team next year. Chances are that I worked with that kid for two minutes throughout the day, but if I say that it looks like their kid isn't getting quality attention. Nope, I just jiggle my keys, look at my watch and bust it to the car.

Punch in, punch out.