Basketball camp offers bonding experience for fathers and sons

Summer is usually reserved for relaxing, hanging out at the pool and vacationing, but here at IU, more than 2,000 kids ages 9-18 and about 120 high school basketball teams will be participating in IU basketball coach Kelvin Sampson’s summer basketball camps at Indiana University.\nThe camps run from the second week of June until the first of August. The camps range from the popular Father-Child Camp to Elite Camp, where the Hoosier coaching staff gets to look at potential future recruits. This summer is Sampson’s second season running basketball camps at IU. Although he was hired three months before his first camp started last year, Sampson said he was not worried about getting campers and staff to come last summer. “I actually had kids and coaches that were going to my camp while I was at Oklahoma make the trip to Indiana to attend camp here which is a great compliment,” he said.\nSampson said the camp he enjoys running the most is the three day Father-Child Camp. This year is the first that the Father-Child Camp was will be offered at IU. Sampson brought the camp with him from Oklahoma. \n“It’s a great time to spend quality father-and-child time,” he said.\nSampson said that in his two years running basketball camps at IU, he hasn’t experienced much difference between IU and Oklahoma. Even though IU is known for its rich basketball tradition, he said his camps at Oklahoma were just as big or bigger as the ones he has run at Indiana, which he thinks is partly because of facility size. \n “At Oklahoma all the courts to play on were in one spot. It’s a little different here because we have to use the HPER courts, which makes it a little bit of the walk for the kids,” Sampson said.\nThis year’s camps have not been any different from previous camps Coach Sampson has run, despite heightened expectations for Hoosier success next season after the signing of top recruit Eric Gordon.\n“It’s mostly the parents that get caught up in all the hype,” Sampson said. “Eric was around the gym (Monday) and I think the campers could have cared less. Their biggest concerns are when their next game is.”\nOne of the most important things Sampson stresses to all his campers is a philosophy he calls D.O.F.\n“It’s a very simple concept we try to instill into our campers,” he said. “It stands for discipline, organized and fun.”