CHOCOWINITY — The calendar may say its June but inside the Southside High School gymnasium it sounded like the middle of winter as sneakers screeched across the Seahawks basketball court while balls thudded up and down the hardwood.
That was the scene at the 10th annual Southside Seahawks Youth Basketball Camp on Tuesday as roughly 26 young athletes attended the four-day camp with the goal of improving their hoops skills.
“The goal of the camp for the younger kids is to show them the fundamentals,” said Southside athletic director and third-year varsity boys’ basketball coach Sean White. “For the older kids, the goal is to really hone their skills and fundamentals because most of them are ready to play school ball. But really, the goal overall is to have the kids work on their fundamentals and become better basketball players.”
The camp was started by White 11 years ago when he was the Southside JV basketball coach, but the camp took a one-year hiatus last summer due to renovations made to the Seahawks gym.
“When I was the JV coach here I started this as fundraiser for the basketball program,” White said. “For the most part the age of the kids has stayed the same over the years. We’ve had a good mix of players 8-14-years old and I’ve been real pleased with the amount of girls we’ve had here at the camp over the years. We usually have 6-10 girls each year, which is a good number.”
White said that he likes to draw up a different game plan each year to better entertain the returning campers, but the goal of the camp remains the same.
“We change the format to try and do different stuff every year,” White said. “For the most part the fundamentals are the same but we do try and do different drills so it’s not the same thing every year.”
Aside from White, the camp is being instructed by girls’ varsity coach Bill Lake and assistant girls’ coach Milton Ruffin, along with trainer Otis Harrell and a host of boys and girls senior varsity players.
A majority of the campers hail from Chocowinity, but White said he had a handful of players from Washington and in past years he has had players from Belhaven and Bath.
The camp, which began on Monday and ends on Thursday, runs from 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. and White has broken down each day to address specific areas of the game.
“We like to split it up,” White said. “On Monday we did all ball-handling and dribbling, today we’re doing footwork and passing, (Wednesday) we’re doing shooting and on Thursday we put it all together and do some defense.”
White said since he started running the camp that he has seen the benefits of it trickle up into the varsity levels.
“No doubt,” said White. “We got some kids that came here as a youth that are already in the program now and it’s been a big help.”