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Camping still key
For years, team camp has been the centerpiece around which most local high school basketball teams built their summer programs.
A little more than a year ago, the Alabama High School Athletic Association amended its rules regarding summer competition, but those changes did little to lessen the importance of team camp for area squads.
“It’s not a time that we’re concerned about conditioning and execution. It’s a learning phase,” Crossville coach Tracy Hulgan said. “We’re trying to … determine who’s going to be on our roster in the preseason.”
Often, camps provide teams with the opportunity to face schools they won’t compete against during the regular season, Hulgan said, and he wasn’t the only coach who noted that benefit.
“You get to see teams you’ll never see in any other situation,” Geraldine girls coach Steve Simpson said. “It’s a good experience for the kids to get to play against other competition.”
Team camp used to be the only opportunity AHSAA member teams, regardless of sport, had to face outside competition during the summer. Teams were allowed to attend one camp per year.
All that changed a year ago when the AHSAA voted to allow all teams seven days of summer competition. Team can play as many games as they want on those days, and any days spent at a camp count against each squad’s allotment of seven.
The changes gave coaches more options when designing their summer programs, and while many will schedule individual play dates, most will also take their teams to camp.
Collinsville girls coach Donny Jones is taking his team to a three-day camp at Birmingham-Southern later this summer.
“The girls are together for nearly a 24-hour period for two or three days,” Jones said. “You can develop a family atmosphere. Our kids seem to enjoy getting away. It’s a good chance to gauge yourself, see where you’re at against other schools.”
Turnover is a fact of life for high school teams. Seniors graduate, players transfer out, players transfer in, younger players move up from the junior varsity.
Like Jones, many coaches appreciate the opportunity camp provides to build team chemistry.
“It’s difficult to do that when you’re just going for a day and coming back,” said Fort Payne girls coach Steve Sparks, whose team will attend camp at Tallahassee, Fla., this summer. “When you go to a team camp, you’re usually gone for several days. Teams get to bond together as a team and get to know each other.”
All coaches contacted by Times-Journal on Tuesday plan to take their teams to out-of-town camps this summer. Like Jones, Hulgan and Simpson and Ider boys coach Jamie Pruett are taking their squads to Birmingham-Southern. Fyffe boys coach Neal Thrash said his team will attend camp at Jacksonville State.
Of course, the coaches were also planning to take advantage — to some degree — of the rule changes passed by AHSAA in 2005. While team camp is a big part of their plans, all were committed to at least one summer play date.
Pruett’s Hornets will play every Wednesday during June — twice at Dade County (Ga.) and two more times at Ridgeland (Ga.). Pruett said individual play dates are attractive to his squad because of the up-tempo style Ider plays.
“During the summer, we don’t press as much as we do during the season, but we still push the ball up the court,” he said. “During the third day [of camp], you’re just trying to get through it.”
Thrash said there are some advantages to the individual play dates that may cause some coaches to take a reconsider their summer plans in the future.
“The biggest value I can see is they don’t have the expense of a team camp,” he said. “Plus, it’s easier to work out one day around [a student’s schedule] than it is a team camp. I can see where more and more schools may go away from team camps. Sometimes at team camp you play 6A schools [and lose badly]. This way, you have some control over it.”
Sparks and Simpson both said play dates also give players a break from their normal summer routines.
Hulgan had scheduled one play date at Douglas in June, and he said more dates could be added to his team’s summer schedule.
“If something else develops and the boys want to play an additional date and the time element fits, we’ll play another day or two,” Hulgan said. “We’re going to try not to over saturate them.”
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