By JASON HABERMEYER
habermeyer@newsroom.byu.edu
When former BYU basketball coach Stan Watts organized the first BYU summer sports camp in 1955 with only 10 kids, he probably had no idea how much the camps would grow from their humble beginnings.
Today more than 10,000 young athletes come to BYU each summer in a two-and-a-half month period for almost 50 sessions of sports camps and another 10 in dance. The number one objective, said Sports Camps Director Rob Holcombe, is not just to play sports but to give the campers the total BYU experience.
'Our overall goal is to let these kids be touched by the university, by the spirit here and the facilities and to rub shoulders with other LDS kids,' said Holcombe, now in his seventh year as director. 'Most of them don't have the opportunity to come here and our challenge and our goal is to give them insight as to what it is like to be a student here.'
Aside from the recreational aspect of the camps, the kids are also exposed to a wide number of social activities that include dances, ice cream bashes and talent shows. The camps run Monday through Friday with the exception of the basketball camps that go only until Thursday. One of the more difficult parts of the camps are the hours -- they start at 8 in the morning and can run straight through to 10 at night.
'It's tough getting up so early in the morning but it's been fun,' said 13-year-old Chad Denison from West Valley City, who attended the volleyball camp. 'I came here because I wanted to work on my technique and skills, and I want to come back next year.'
Holcombe said the most popular camps are the football and basketball camps with close to 1,000 youngsters in the five sessions between them. One of the latest camps to be introduced, the Fathers and Sons Basketball Camp, has been a huge success, with 187 participants last year and 350 in this year's camp. The camp runs over Memorial Day weekend and gives the sons a chance to beat up on their dads.
'It really is a workout for the dads,' said Holcombe. 'The tape and the Ben-Gay take care of them. But it's the only camp we run where we have people trying to secure their spot for next year's camp.'
During the camp, dads and sons room together in the dorms and work out and play together. On Sunday the camp members travel to Salt Lake City to the Tabernacle for the Music and the Spoken Word and have a sacrament meeting with selected General Authorities at Assembly Hall. BYU men's basketball head coach Steve Cleveland, who organized the camp, said the response has been incredible.
'I just decided that there wouldn't be a better place in the world to do a fathers and sons camp,' Cleveland said. 'It gives the dads a concentrated period of time to be with their sons and in my 23 years of coaching I have never been affiliated with a better camp. It's a pretty neat Memorial Day weekend.'
One of the biggest benefits for the coaches who run the camps is the opportunity to get an eye on future recruiting possibilities. BYU recently received a verbal commitment from Casey Bills, a 6-foot-1, 226-pound linebacker from Arapaho High School in Littleton, Colo., who attended the June camp. The Cougars offered the highly-touted Bills a scholarship on the first day of the camp and he accepted it two days later. Head Coach LaVell Edwards said the camps are a big factor in recruiting efforts.
'No question recruiting is a big part of the camps,' Edwards said. 'We've always recruited three or four kids each camp. This is still a game of technique and they have to be able to execute and we spend a lot of time with the kids on that.'
Holcombe said there have been many who have attended the camps that have gone on to star at the school or in their respective sports, such as Shawn Bradley, Chad Lewis, and Paul Cluff. Mark Durrant, who played basketball for BYU during the 1989-90 and 1992-95 seasons, came to two of the camps during high school and still remembers his experience.
'It was great to interact with the coaches and players I looked up to when I came to the camps,' Durrant said. 'You get to spend a week to do what you love to do and I still have friends that I met at the camp. It's something you take with you for a long time afterwards.'
Cleveland said that using the camps as a recruiting tool has diminished due to the traveling teams that many kids are involved with over the summer that do not give them the time necessary to come.
'It's difficult to get them here but once they are on campus we can do whatever we want,' he said. 'We're trying to organize some specialty camps for next year, like a big man camp and a guard camp, that will run just over a weekend where we can bring in more players.'
Holcombe said that one of the highlights of his experience with the camps has been the development of minor sports such as hockey, lacrosse and softball to give those not in the mainstream an opportunity to come to BYU. He also said that one of the challenges with every camp is finding a happy medium between being competitive and being too intense.
'We're not trying to field minor league teams here,' Holcombe said. 'What we are trying to do is give high-quality sports instruction in a short period of time. But the social aspect will always be an important part of giving them the total experience.'