Burnet athletic department ends month with three camps

CAPTION: Burnet football head coach Ben Speer is leading the Bulldogs’ football camp next week. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro

The Burnet Consolidated Independent School District athletic department is hosting three camps beginning Monday, July 28.

The Football Camp, for youngsters in the third grade to the ninth grade, will be conducted from 8-10 a.m. while the volleyball camp is from 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. for incoming freshmen. Both end Wednesday, July 30.

The Swim and Dive Camp for third- through ninth-graders is from 8-10 a.m. Wednesday-Friday, July 30-Aug. 1.

Each camp costs $50 and emphasizes the basics and fundamentals of each sport.

While the football camp will highlight the Bulldogs’ usual “skills and drills,” head coach Ben Speer noted attending this camp is especially meaningful for the seventh-. eighth- and ninth-graders.

“It’s very important for them to be there,” he said. “We like for those guys to attend. It gives us a leg-up in starting, especially with our seventh- and eighth-graders. They have a little bit of knowledge.”

The freshmen attending is especially useful, Speer said, because of all the changes they’ll experience in the coming days: new campus, new principal, new teachers and adjusting to a new way of doing things. By coming to football camp, the freshmen will learn how the high school athletes prepare and take care of themselves so they won’t have as much to adjust to later, he added.

“It’s a tough transition going to the high school and all the stuff they have to do,” he said. “It’s so good for them to get the experience and see the coaches when they show up for camp and school.”

Those players will participate in the warm-ups, drills and other program routines that are second nature to athletes who have several years playing in the program.

“It’s great for us to see kids,” he said. “We can shuffle them in certain areas. It’s good for them to have confidence. ‘Coach knows who I am. He knows my name.’ I’m excited about them being confident in what we’re doing. We’re not having to start from scratch. Sometimes they forget things and you have to remind them.”

Though many of the athletes have played in the Burnet Youth Football League where they have been taught the program’s terms, the camp will give them a refresher, Speer said.

“They use our terminology on defense and offense,” he said. “It’s not foreign.”

The seventh and eighth-graders have made their way to the Burnet Student Activity Center to participate in summer strength and conditioning where they’ve met their new coaches or re-established relationships with the veterans on the staff. Speer believes all of that can only benefit the program as it gets ready for the fall.

The camp happens a week before high schools across the state begin two-a-day training camps.

“It also gets us ready for what’s to come,” Speer said. “It’s pretty good for alignment that we have those guys. It’s always great for confidence. We enjoy it, especially with the little kids, the future Bulldogs.”

CAPTION: Burnet volleyball head coach Crystal Shipley is conducting a volleyball camp for freshmen that begins Monday, July 28. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro