In the summer, the hardwood also heats up.

Forty boys attended the annual Trinity Lutheran boys basketball camp.

Camp director and Trinity Lutheran head boys coach Brian Stuckwisch said he had 25 second- through fifth-graders in the mornings and 15 fifth-eighth graders at the afternoon sessions that ended Thursday.

The campers were from schools in Seymour, Brownstown and Columbus.

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Stuckwisch said with the younger group, it was about the fundamentals.

“We teach a lot of the basics, dribbling, passing, proper technique of passing,” he said. “We try to do a little form shooting with them, and we use the smaller balls with the hand print on them so they know how to put their hands on the ball and what position to help them shoot the correct way.”

The youngest campers shot at lower goals.

“We had the 8-foot goals, and they’re adjustable where we can go a little lower than that, but most of them handled the 8-foot goal pretty well,” Stuckwisch said. “We had them shoot a lot of layups, a lot of 5-, 10-foot shots, just short shots. We tried to make a game out of it so it’s fun, so it’s repetition, but it’s still fun at the same time.”

The campers spent a lot of time working on ball-handling skills.

“We had them dribbling and passing, using their right hand and their left hand both,” Stuckwisch said. “In the younger group we only had one kid that was left-handed. We did a lot of dribbling around the cones with the right hand and the left hand, and went back-and-forth to help them diversify so they know they have to use that other hand.”

Stuckwisch said the older group worked more on team-orientated skills.

“We do more team drills together,” he said. “We do the three-man weave and a transition drill. We still do some one-on-one dribbling and ball handling, but we concentrate more on group drills at the same time.”

Peyton Pollert, a lefty who will be a sixth-grader at Immanuel Lutheran School, said he planned to work a lot on ball handling during the camp.

“I’ve worked on dribbling with my right hand,” Pollert said. “I’ve been working on my game overall.”

He said this is his second time attending the Trinity camp, and he also attended a baseball camp earlier in the summer.

Chase Sawyer, who will be an eighth-grader at St. John’s Sauers, said this is his first year attending the Trinity camp after attending basketball camps in Brownstown in previous summers.

He has been a point guard on one of the Trinity travel teams this summer.

“I like being able to cross people over,” Sawyer said. “I’ve been working on my ball handling and my passing.”

He said he enjoyed playing with the Schepman triplets, Ben, Jay and Sam, at the camp. They were all teammates at Sauers.

Jaren Cunningham, who is going into seventh grade at Lutheran Central, said he has been attending the Trinity camp for four years, and he also attended basketball camps in Brownstown.

“I play more on the perimeter, and I like shooting and defense,” he said. “I like to play man-to-man defense.”

Cunningham, who helped his LC team place third in the LIT last winter, said he thinks he definitely improved his game this week.

The final day of camp brought everything together.

“The last day of camp we tried to make it a lot more fun,” Stuckwisch said. “We had a shooting competition, a hot shot competition and a 3-point contest. We handed out certificates and some awards for those games.”