Airdrie’s Bert Church High School will be one of 14 Western Canadian stops for the popular NBC summer basketball camps.
The week-long event, being presented locally by the Airdrie Minor Basketball Association and Ridley Scouting, will run at the school from July 19-23.
It is designed for six to 12-year-old boys and girls, both novice and more advanced, who want to enhance their skills in anticipation of the new seasons.
“It’s an intro camp, so it’s for kids who maybe haven’t played that much basketball but they enjoy it and want a positive atmosphere,” said Shawn Stetson, director of NBC camps Canada, an affiliate of the Spokane-based company, which was founded in 1971.
“It’s intense, but it’s a lot of fun and we just want to build confidence in kids and at the end of the week we hope they will enjoy basketball. If they enjoy it and and they have a great time, they’re going to want to keep playing basketball.”
Stetson said NBC camps encourages excellence on and off the court by including life skills and leadership training, as well as the four main skill stations will be ball handling, shooting, individual offence and individual defence.
This is the 25th year for NBC camps in Canada, with its base camp in Olds, but the first time the event will be held in Airdrie.
“We’ve got a great location there and we already have 30 kids signed up,” Stetson said.
“Our goal is to get 40 kids and for our first year, that would be wonderful. We were kind of outgrowing our home so we started the new overnight camp in Edmonton a couple years ago and last year we added a day camp to Calgary. We thought, this year, we would expand that into other areas. It should be a lot of fun.”
The NBC basketball camp will run July 19-23 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. each day at the Bert Church High School gym. Registration, which is $225, with a $25 discount for AMBA players, can be completed at www.nbccamps.com by clicking on the Airdrie, Alberta link.
