Nine lucky kids got to practice their dribbling and shots at a July 25 basketball clinic at the Camp Verde Community Gym as part of the town’s Youth Skills Clinics Saturday Series.
The clinic was taught by the Recreation Leader for the Town of Camp Verde Parks and Recreation, Lori Webb, who has experience coaching kids from her long-time career as a physical education teacher.
“I thought it went really well,” Webb said of the clinic. “It was really what I wanted — to give these kids an opportunity to have fun in a good, controlled environment and to give some basic skills.”
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic did pose some challenges. Parks & Rec had to limit the number of kids that could participate. While the kids weren’t required to wear masks during the actual drills, they were required to wear them at all other times. But Webb noted that the participants adhered to the restrictions of the day well. She was also pleased that the clinic was able to take place at all, given the present challenges.
Throughout the clinic, the participants were taught a number of the fundamental basketball skills, such as passing and dribbling. The final drill was shooting, which participants Avery Smith-Warburton and Cylo Hauser both identified as their favorite part of the day.
The clinic was limited to kids ages 5 to 8. It was the first real foray into basketball for a number of them, and none of them had much experience in the sport prior to Saturday. Webb, though, was enthused with how quickly the kids not only learned the activities, but became competent in them.
“Oh my gosh, like I was telling them, in 10 minutes, I couldn’t believe the improvement,” Webb said. “From where we started to, all of a sudden, ‘Wow, that looks like a shot.’ That I thought went really well. The younger ones, the 5- and 6-year-olds, they’re the ones that we saw the big improvements with in five minutes of dribbling. They all of a sudden were able to get it, control it. Passing, being able to see that they weren’t going to be afraid of catching the ball.”
“I would say from a scale of one-to-10, with some of them starting at a one, I’d say they got up to about a five,” Webb said. “Some of the older ones were already up there and they improved. That’s really encouraging. I hope that when they go home they keep working and it will show when they play basketball.”
