Burnet CISD summer camps instill more than skills
CAPTION: Athletic director Grant Freeman (left) believes sport camps are the foundation of helping the next group of great Bulldogs and Lady Dawgs learn the fundamentals of each sport, including football from head coach Ben Speer. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
Though the school year may be ending, Burnet Consolidated Independent School District head coaches are preparing to host several sports camps from late May to the end of July.
First up are baseball and girls basketball
The baseball camp for incoming third- through fifth-graders begins at 8 a.m. and incoming sixth- through ninth-graders is at 10:30 a.m.
The Lady Dawgs basketball camp is for incoming third- through ninth-graders and begins at 8 a.m. Tuesday, May 26.
The camps end Thursday, May 28, and cost $51.
Athletic director Grant Freeman took a “look from 3,000 feet” to talk about the importance of summer camps.
“(The University Interscholastic League) is really big right now on community-based athletics,” he said. “So many times right now, we are seeing kids exit their community to go choose another path or to find some sport-specific academies or charters or private (schools). This is what makes the UIL and especially the state of Texas really stand above everybody else – it starts with things like sports camps. It gives those kids a taste of what it means to be a Burnet Bulldog, to get that taste of ‘I represent the community in which I live in, I grow up seeing those kids and they are my heroes, and I want to be like them and I want to be a hero as well for my community.’”
He pointed out that for some campers, this might be their first time to experience what it’s like to put on an athletic-department issued Kelly green garment and feel a sense of pride in knowing they earned that because they learned how to better play a sport.
“I do buy into that,” he said. “I think this is where you build that and then it translates to them. It goes from the sports camps and getting excited about things in the summer to being able to get a taste of that, and then it puts them in the stands on Friday nights, the events that we do like Meet the Bulldogs and they see those people they got to work with this summer and there’s a match there. They can identify with it once they see it; they’ve been through it and now they see it.”
He added many of the drills campers learn mirror what high school athletes are doing during season and offseason workouts. And that familiarity is priceless for coaches and for these campers.
“It really just ties into it,” he said. “It’s a web that kind of winds itself that way.”
And the athletic director likes that the head coaches serve as the camp directors because it illustrates alignment throughout the department, he said,
“This gives them a tangible piece that they can see and talk to and work with the students that are below them in that vertical path,” he said. “And two, it really gives coaches a foundation of what they want to do in their programs. It gives them a preview to see ‘Hey, I have these kind of kids coming up. Maybe I can make some little tweaks, or I can do some different things in this manner in the upcoming years’ or maybe we have a different type of kid coming up, and that gets them already thinking about how they can mix that into their program going forward.”
Freeman said he happens to have a front row seat on how local sports impact a community. And he likes what he sees.
“This is what drives community-based athletics,” he said. “That’s why the UIL has been so successful. It’s why we’re the best in the nation, in the state of Texas. And this is basically the grassroots or the starting point for it.” Families can register for camps at burnetcisd.net by clicking on departments and scrolling to athletics. Then look for summer camps on the right side to bring up a list of options.
CAPTION: Baseball head coach Russell Houston (left) will be on the diamond to welcome youngsters to baseball camp, a summer activity that Mason Watson may have enjoyed. Staff photo by Jennifer Fierro
