BC Wheelchair Basketball hosted a High Performance camp at Douglas College on January 7 & 8.
11 female and 18 male High Performance athletes trained hard through the weekend under the instruction by great coaches.
The camp started at 9am on Saturday with a choice of warm-ups, Ultimate Frisbee or handball.
After the warm-up, Marni Abbott-Peter led the women’s group on one side of the gym and Joe Higgins led the men’s group on the other. Each group worked on individual skills such as defensive basics as well as team skills including transition and offensive tactics.
This High Performance camp was targeted specifically to the high level calibar. These athletes will be trying out for respective provincial teams that are competing at the nationals at Richmond Olympic Oval in May. The pace and intensity of the practices were very high and both groups were able to work more on game situations during the camp.
At lunch time, Steve Ramsbottom, strength and conditioning trainer from Performance Institute came out to provide the key information on conditioning to the athletes. He also stayed to run a circuit session with variety of drills to challenge athletes in the afternoon.
On Sunday, the athletes came back at 9am again and worked more on team skills. Arley McNeney and Tim Frick came out to coach this day and shared their knowledge with the athletes. Feeling a little stiffness and soreness from the day before, the athletes kept pushing hard and learned lots from the coaches.
Regional coaches, Brad Hagkull (Chilliwack), Simon Cass (Victoria), David Johnson (Victoria), Christian Burkett (Seattle), and Lamar Whitfield (Seattle) also helped athletes throughout the weekend while learning from the experienced coaches.
We had 13 regional players at the camp travelling from across BC at the camp. We greatly appreciate their commitment to the sport and believe that they are the big part of the reasons that our regional programs keep growing.
All and all, a great weekend of basketball and we would like to thank all the athletes and coaches for their hard work and support. We are looking forward to up-coming competitions of high performance athletes and a great performance of our provincial teams in May.
Our thanks also goes to Douglas College for their continuous support and volunteers for their time to help our athletes over the weekend.
