Most everyone knows that an athlete makes his/her self in the offseason, so there’s no better way to hone one’s basketball skills than to take part in a summer basketball camp.
The Great Bend High School girls’ basketball camp was held Monday through Thursday at the Panther Athletic Center.
“We had 30 seventh- and eighth-graders and 14 third- through sixth-graders,” said Great Bend High School girls’ head basketball coach Jason Tatkenhorst of the four-day camp. “We kind of liked to have a few more younger girls here, but the ones we had in camp are pretty good ballplayers.
“With these younger girls, everything we tell them, they do exactly what we tell them. They’re very coachable girls and fun to work with.”
It has been an annual thing for Tatkenhorst, who is entering his 12th season as head coach at GBHS and has now conducted 11 straight summer camps.
“We try to offer a camp for a week during the summer,” he said. “It helps the coaches know the names of the younger girls that want to play basketball and we also had high school girls helping out in the camp.”
The bottom line is that if a player doesn’t work on fundamentals as a youngster, there’s no way to catch up by the time they’re reaching high school-age.
“This day-and-age, now you have to start at a younger age,” Tatkenhorst said. “You need to be learning the fundamentals as a grade-schooler or else you get way behind.
“It’s important to come to camp and learn those fundamentals. Anybody that does that has a head start on becoming a really good ballplayer.”