The Tribune

By BRENT STUBBS

Senior Sports Reporter

bstubbs@tribunemedia.net

THE Legacy Basketball Camp got started on Monday at the St George’s Gymnasium in Grand Bahama and coordinator Jay Phillippe was quite impressed with what he saw from the participants.

The free-for-all camp, which features American coach Robert Yonice, is designed for boys and girls from the ages of five and up and will run through June 30 from 9am to 1pm.

“We are working on the basic concept of basketball, which is dribbling, shooting and passing,” said Phillippe, a former outstanding basketball player turned coach, who is doing an incredible job with the Sunland Baptist senior boys’ basketball team.

“We had so many kids who came out. We had over 120 kids coming over and so we had to get some of our local coaches and some of my players who are currently off to school to come out and help out.”

Phillippe said the whole idea is to provide the basic fundamentals for the participants to learn so that they can become better basketball players.

“We’ve had so much success coming out of Grand Bahama with Buddy Hield, Jonquel Jones and Yolett McPhee-McCuin, who is doing a fine job coaching US women’s college basketball. This is just another continued step in our growth and development.

“We have a lot of kids who came out to work on their concept like I mentioned over the past two weeks. So, we feel that we will have some players who are better prepared for the future as a result of their involvement in the camp.”

Yonice, who hails out of Knoxville, Tennessee, and has been coaching at the division one level for eight years, said he’s back for his second trip to Grand Bahama to help impact some of his knowledge to the participants of the camp.

“My purpose here is to come down and help these kids learn the fundamentals of basketball,” he pointed out.

“The game of basketball has helped me and coach Jay and all these other kids who have gone on to travel the world.

“If you put in the work and you learn how to play the game the right way, you can get that opportunity too. So my job is coming down here and what I hope to accomplish is how do you play the game the right way.”

If the participants develop an attitude of disciplining themselves, Yonice said it will help a long way in their progress.

“If you can be disciplined on the field, you can be disciplined in life,” he stated.

“If you learn how to be disciplined in sports that normally translates into life. As much as we all love to play sports for the rest of our lives, unfortunately that won’t happen.

“So, you have to learn how to be disciplined, not only for yourself, but for your team-mates.”

Although the camo was ongoing, it was the first day for Yonice, who was quite impressed with what he saw from the participants.

“It reminded me of the last time I was here. There are a lot of guys with a lot of athletic talent, who can jump out of the gym and they have a lot of skills,” he said.

“But like so many other players who left here to go to college, they learned that there’s a lot more to it playing basketball.

“They had to find out that they need to play better defence, better team defence and they have to play much harder when they play different college players.

“So, while they may have some success here, they have to realise that they have to do all of the little things to be great.”

During his time at the camp, Yonice said he hopes to be able to enforce some of the things that the participants would have learnt from Phillippe and a number of the other instructors, who worked with them since the beginning of the camp.