ARCANUM – Thirty-two girls in the fourth through sixth grades learned about basketball from the Lady Trojans’ high school players at Arcanum’s youth girls basketball camp this week.
The camp ran for two hours a day from Monday through Thursday. On any given day the Trojans had 10 to 15 high school players helping instruct the youth, Arcanum varsity girls basketball coach Matt Grote said.
“They’re awesome,” Grote said of his high school players. “They love coming in. They love helping the little girls. The little girls love that they’re here.”
With 32 girls attending, the youth camp grew by about 50 percent from Grote’s first venture a year ago. Also, each morning before the fourth through sixth graders came in approximately one dozen junior high girls worked on their games as well.
“There’s a lot of enthusiastic girls this week that came out every day,” Grote said.
The main focus throughout the week was for the youth campers to work on their dribbling and shooting.
“I like to do everything we do in camp they can bring home,” Grote said. “So when they left camp they got a sheet with the drills we did just to remind them in case they forget.”
The girls showed a lot of progress in the past four days as they worked on their techniques.
“A couple of the girls, especially, they came in and were shooting with two hands and kind of pushing the ball up,” Grote said. “By the end of the week we got them form shooting with one hand. It looked a lot better.”
While the girls improved a lot during the week, Grote told them they’ll need to continue to practice on their own at home.
“If we can dribble and shoot at home that saves us a lot of time when we get to high school, when we get to middle school, even in youth basketball,” he said. “So if they can do those two things everything else is pretty coachable. If you put in the time in the offseason you’ll get better.”
