More than 70 young hoopers attend Breeze’s camp

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Several dozen aspiring basketball players came out last week to John Burr Memorial Gymnasium for Indians’ head coach Deron Breeze’s youth basketball camp.

The three-day affair ran Tuesday through Thursday last week from 8:30 a.m. until 11:45 a.m. each day. Participants included boys ranging from kindergarten through eighth grade and girls from kindergarten to fifth grade. Breeze, his staff, and 13 of his high school players served as coaches and instructors.

“I thought it went really well,” Breeze says. “We didn’t have any incidents or anything like that. The players did a really good job once again of trying to teach and correct the kids. They don’t just stand around. I thought it was a good camp.”

Activities included drills, skill development, contests, and different stations focusing on offensive and defensive fundamentals.

“We learned how to jump stop and pivot, how to stop off the dribble and not turn the ball over,” Breeze explains. “We went through offensive concepts, how to move without the ball, and [former Lady Indians’ head coach] Andrew Reliford helped us out with the defensive drills and stations. We also did an agility station where we’d take them in the weight room and show them some different things they can work on by themselves.”

The head coach says the camp is intended to give players the chance to improve on their own instead of trying to master new skills over just a few days.

“When you’ve got so many kids, it’s not really about how much they learn,” he says. “They are not going to come to a three-hour camp for three days with 70 other kids and walk out of there a lot better player. The big thing to me is giving them something that they can take home and work on over time.”

The annual camp is one of the steps Breeze has taken to establish a cohesive Adair basketball program encompassing all grade levels. Through his seven seasons leading the program, he has compiled a 131-79 record, and says he may split the camp into two age brackets moving forward to better prepare the older attendees for high school basketball.

“We might look to do a day/night thing with K through fifth grade together and sixth through eighth grade together,” Breeze says. “The older kids, they need to start learning some of the stuff we do at the high school level, so that might be what we do in the future.”

Additional camp photos, including contest winners, are below:

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