Happy Campers

Although their status isn't measured by scoreboards, NSU coaches are in a very important phase of their jobs in June and July.

It's camp season.

Boys and girls high school age down to pre-K enjoy instruction, competition and activities coordinated by the Northwestern coaching staffs each summer. Some sports get into the camp action during winter months (baseball/softball, for example, host Christmas break camps).

Here, and far, our coaches are dealing with some happy campers.

Just this Father's Day weekend, Prather Coliseum was teeming with teams. Coach Mike McConathy's annual Demon Basketball Team Camp attracted 62 high school boys teams from Louisiana and Texas for an action packed 36-hour stretch of competition, augmented by an hour-long clinic in which the Demon coaches and players demonstrated an array of their drills and skills for the campers.

Assistant coaches Jeff Moore and Mark Slessinger, along with staffers Bob Austin and D.J. Ross, were ringleaders for the circus-like atmosphere. And I mean "circus-like" from the aspects of (1) everybody having lots of fun and (2) instead of having three rings, the camp used four courts in Prather Coliseum and two more at the Health and Human Performance Building across campus. Needless to say, it takes a lot of work to host a camp, especially one with more than 500 players involved.

I mentioned "pre-K" kids, and again, there's Coach Mike and crew serving the interests of the NSU fan base. The "Father-Son Camp" has morphed into the "Parent/Grandparent-Child Camp" with dads and daughters, grandparents and grandkids, moms and sons, and oh, yeah, fathers and sons playing basketball together, competing and laughing. Watching the "pressure free throw competition" a couple weeks ago, with Demon players, kids and other campers heckling parents trying to stay in a shooting contest, was hilarious!

Across the street, The Demon Diamond was jammed full of young girls earlier this month for one of the softball camps offered by the NSU coaching staff of Becky McMurtry and Krystal Nichols. It was a brutally hot June weekend but kids and parents were bounding about, parents with umbrellas and video cameras and kids with bats and gloves.

If it's a big crowd of campers and celebrities you want to see, be here next Saturday, June 23, when the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame teams up with Coach Scott Stoker and the Demon football program. Their annual high school 7-on-7 passing tournament kicks off with a bang, as each year's class of Hall of Fame football inductees (this year's list is All-Pro linebacker Pat Swilling, All-Pro kick returner Brian Mitchell and Super Bowl quarterback Stan Humphries) join with returning HOF members to speak (briefly) to the 600+ campers and then visit with them on the sidelines throughout the morning of the tournament.

Camps don't just happen on campus. Saturday morning, Lady Demon volleyball coach Brittany Uffelman flew off to her home stomping grounds up in Wyoming. Over the next two weeks, she will stage camps in Wyoming and Montana with hundreds of volleyball-crazed kids. As fun as volleyball is to watch, there's only a handful of high school or club teams within hailing distance of the NSU campus, so following the lead of her predecessor, Leigh Mullins, Coach B has hosted camps away from campus where the players are. The Demon soccer and football staffs also have conducted camps in off-site locations.

So, when I hear well-intentioned friends say to our coaches, "I guess you're resting up for the fall, right?", I wish they had the chance to leave their jobs to come by to watch the work these coaches put into their camps during the "down time." Camp season really never ends. While our coaches are on the road and on the phone and on the internet recruiting year-round, they are also urging coaches and players to come to NSU's camps.

These camps are useful and valuable. They generate money for NSU, help supplement coaches salaries and operating budgets, introduce many campers to the beautiful and friendly university campus, and provide exposure for prospective players to our coaching staffs, allowing our coaches to evaluate prospects for upcoming recruiting classes.

So, while vacations do happen this time of year, this isn't a lazy stretch for our coaching staffs. All they want right now are happy campers.

Doug Ireland, SID