Veteran Hancock head basketball coach Tyson Aye and future women’s lead assistant basketball coach Connor Dodd said beforehand Monday that they would relish the energy at the 11th annual Hancock College Youth Basketball Camp.
Staffers and campers did indeed bring the energy Monday, the first day of the camp that will run through Thursday at Hancock’s Joe White Memorial Gymnasium. The camp is for boys and girls ages eight-through-14.
The Hancock men’s basketball program is sponsoring the camp, and coaches in the program are serving as camp staffers.
“Good job, good job!,” Dodd shouted as the youngsters dribbled the ball in front of their legs, between their legs, to the side and then to the front again during one drill.
“Keep working!,” Dodd shouted. “If you make a mistake, you’re doing good!,” meaning the campers were properly trying to do the entire drill instead of just the easiest part.
“I love these camps, when (the campers) ask for help,” Dodd said before drills started. “This is my third camp. It’s always good to give back to the community.”
Dodd will be the full-time lead Hancock assistant women’s coach when the 2024-25 basketball season begins. Dodd had been a part-time assistant with the school’s men’s and women’s basketball programs as well as the recruiting coordinator for the Hancock men’s team. Dodd said he will work solely with the school’s women’s program this coming season.
Khloe Hernandez, 14, – “I’ll be 15 soon,” she said during camp Monday – was particularly agile during the ball-handling drill. Hernandez is a forward who played for two years at the junior high school level and hopes to play for the Righetti High School girls basketball program as a freshman this coming school year.
“This is my third camp, and I like the energy level in the drills and in the games,” Hernandez said.
Aye is overseeing the 11th annual Hancock Youth Basketball Camp. He is also one of the staffers there.
“There are probably 30 campers,” Aye said before drills started. “That’s probably a little down from what the numbers have been the past few years.”
Aye said that “Absolutely,” he is happy with the numbers at the Hancock camp this year. “I’m just happy to have some of our community youth in here with us,” the Hancock coach said.
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Abram Wilson, age eight, and Dominic Mendoza, nine, play for the Huskies, a youth basketball age group travel ball team based in Santa Maria. Abram is a center for the team. Dominic is a forward.
“I like the drills best,” Abram Wilson said when he was asked about what his favorite part of the camp was. As far as drills being the best part of the camp, Dominic Mendoza seconded Abram’s opinion.
Camp staffers and campers gathered at center court for introductions and calisthenics. Before the exercises began, Aye called the campers’ attention to a stray basketball at the foot of the bleachers on one side of the camp.
“This is our house, and we keep a clean house,” Aye told the youngsters. “When a ball is not racked up, we’re going to do pushups.”
Aye announced that the campers would do two pushups because of the stray ball. By agreement among the staffers and campers, campers shouted “Clean!” during the first pushup and “House!,” during the second.
After two more pushups, the campers got the message. Two of them sprinted toward the stray basketball, one picked it up and, to applause from some of the other campers, sprinted toward the basket of balls then deposited the ball in the basket.
Shemarr Parker is one of the Hancock camp’s staffers. He was primarily a power forward for the 2017-18 Hancock men’s basketball team that made it to the quarterfinals, though when it came to the positions Parker could play on that team the answer was “All five!,” Aye called out.
Parker is a native of The Bronx borough of New York City who graduated from Santa Maria High School in 2015 and was a team captain for the boys basketball team there.
He will be a first-time assistant Hancock men’s basketball coach during the 2024-25 season and, “This is my third camp,” Parker said Monday. “I just love communicating the game of basketball with the kids.
“Basketball brings together kids of all ages, all walks of life,” said Parker.
Aye said, “It’s good to have the energy back in the building.”
