For The Tribune
Addison Reece said she had fun last week working on her shooting and ball-handling during the annual Seymour Owls girls basketball camp at Seymour Middle School.
“I like to shoot and scrimmage,” Reece said.
She said she enjoys shooting layups but mentioned free throws “are a little far away for me.”
[sc:text-divider text-divider-title=”Story continues below gallery” ]
Delaney Thomasma also said she enjoyed the camp.
“I really like the game, and I want to improve my basketball skills,” she said. “I’m more of a post player. I work on boxing out a lot for my rebounding. I like shooting inside.”
Jason Longmeier, camp director and head coach at Seymour High School, said there were about 80 total campers.
The campers were divided into age groups, beginning with kindergartners and first-graders.
“We teach them a lot of ball-handling, working on their dribbling and stuff, the basics of shooting and then some basic passing stuff, and then with second and third-graders, we bring the goals down for the last half-hour and they play three-on-three,” Longmeier said.
Reece, an incoming fourth-grader at Emerson Elementary School, said this is the third time she attended the camp, and she also plans to attend the volleyball camp.
“I like where you can just play and have fun,” she said, adding that some of her friends also attended the camp, which made it more fun.
The older kids had a slightly different schedule than the younger group.
“With the older group (sixth through eighth-graders), they’ll do two or three drills, and we spend a lot of time playing,” Longmeier said. “Those are the kids we spent a lot of time in the spring with at workouts, so now, we kind of want to see where their play is. I think they enjoy that a little bit more, so out of the hour and a half, we’ll spend 40 or so minutes on some different drills, and then they’ll play for about 40 minutes.
“With what we’re trying to do adding more skills, the opportunities for them in the spring and fall, we didn’t want camp to be a time where they came in and we pounded those same drills. We wanted to make camp a little more enjoyable for them.”
Thomasma, an incoming seventh-grader, said she will play basketball and volleyball and run track.
“We’re just trying to get better in everything,” she said. “You’re pushing yourself from the first day to the last day, see if you can get better. I would encourage younger kids to go the camps and work on your skills when you are younger.”
Longmeier said some of the kids also play AAU basketball.
Members of the high school and middle school coaching staffs and high school players assisted Longmeier at the camp.
