Darrin Keith said he wanted the younger campers to have fun and for the older group to improve their basketball skills when they attended the Trinity Lutheran girls basketball camp in the Bollinger Athletic Complex last week.

This was the first year for Keith to run the girls camp as he assisted Mike Lang with the camp the past two summers. This winter will be Keith’s first season as head girls coach at Trinity.

“It was good learning from Mike what to kind of do and at these kind of things because I had no experience of this stuff prior to coming here,” Keith said.

Marissa Baker and Kennedi Butler said they attended the camp to improve their basketball skills. They were two of the 20 girls that were in the fifth-through-eighth grade groups. There were 30 girls in the kindergarten-through-fourth grade group.

“I think we had five more kids than we had last year,” Keith said, “It was a success. All the kids that come here you see them every year. It’s good to see them grow and love the game of basketball like all the girls that are in here do.”

Baker, who will be an eighth grader at Immanuel Lutheran School said, “This is my third year attending the Trinity basketball camp. I’ve been working on a little bit of everything. I guess basketball keeps me going. The camp was fun.”

Baker said at the camp she worked on improving her dribbling left-handed.

“I like everything about basketball,” she said. “I like to meet new people. I play volleyball at Immanuel and I play travel softball.”

Baker said she also plans to attend the Hanover girls basketball camp and the Trinity volleyball camp this summer.

Butler, an incoming seventh grader, said one of the reasons she plays basketball at St. John’s Sauers is, “I enjoy being with my friends. I like to score. I like to mostly shoot layups.”

Butler, who plans to attend the Indiana University and Hanover College basketball camps said when she dribbles, “I just make sure the ball doesn’t get stolen.”

Keith said, “We worked more with the younger kids on teamwork, talking, being more vocal with each other. It’s hard to teach basketball skills to kindergarten-through-second graders. As we moved up, we kind of progressed more into ball-handing, passing and worked on form and that kind of stuff.”

He said the coaches worked with the older group on more advanced skills.

“In the fifth and sixth grade we really tried to hammer down the aspect of a good pass, good shooting and good form on the dribbling,” Keith said. “With the seventh and eighth graders we let them almost go through what we do at the high school level in practice, so they know what’s coming up when they go into high school the next couple years.”