Camping time for hoops teams

PORTALES — The kids are out of school and the weather is sweltering hot, which means camp season is in full swing. Portales girls varsity basketball coach Wade Fraze, along with boys coach Rickie McBroom, are each running camps this week, as they try to develop the next generation of Ram basketball players.

Both camps run from Tuesday through this afternoon, with a morning session for the younger grades and an afternoon session for the older grades each day. Fraze’ camp, the Lady Ram Building Champions Fundamental Camp, will take place at the Ram Athletic Center gym, as he and McBroom alternate between Portales High School and Junior High each year.

The morning session features third- through fifth-graders, while the afternoons feature sixth through eighth grade. McBroom’s camp, the Portales Ram Fundamental Skills Camp, held at the junior high, features first through sixth grade in the morning, and seventh through ninth in the afternoon.

For both coaches, the fundamentals are the name of the game.

“The morning camp and afternoon camp are a little different. We’re still fundamentally-based in the afternoon, but it’s at a lot faster paced and a higher level,” Fraze explained. “But it all boils down to fundamentals. We want these kids to be versed in the fundamentals and the basics, because that’s gonna carry with them as they grow. It’s more getting up and down the floor drills — some of the same drills we use at the high school level, because these kids are more or less in junior high. These are things they will use in the junior high next year, while this younger camp is basic ballhandling, basic shooting, basic fundamentals.”

McBroom says that for his camp, the first- through third-graders are in a separate gym from the fourth- through sixth-graders, as once again, skills levels vary dramatically from one age group to another.

“It’s fun — we enjoy it. What’s nice is you see a kid in first or second grade, then all of a sudden, they’re playing for you,” McBroom said, laughing. “That’s really neat, because you want to see them grow. What I like about it too is we get to know the kids. We get to know their names, we get to know a little bit about them, we get to know their game. I’ll be honest, that’s a real advantage as they get older, because if I know a kid, that really helps.”

But while both coaches enjoy working with the future of Portales, they must also address the present. Starting this weekend, both the Rams boys and girls varsity and junior varsity teams will begin working in various summer camps, on top of the daily shootarounds at the high school.

McBroom’s squad will participate in a camp down in Roswell this weekend, playing Roswell, Goddard and Alamogordo on Friday alone. They’ll then head to Albuquerque next weekend, followed by Artesia, and then finally, the Eastern New Mexico camp in four weeks, which will be the only one that includes a tournament at the end.

“I think the chemistry is so important, especially this year at the varsity and JV level. The last couple years, it’s been real solid. We’ve got a pretty good idea this year, but we got to take a close look at some kids to see where they’re gonna fit in, and how they’re gonna fit in,” McBroom explained. “Just the chemistry alone is so important. We need to get out there and see what else is around the state too. It’s nice to go play a Silver City or somebody up in the northwest in the summer. You got an idea when the season starts how people are.”

McBroom’s varsity squad will have to replace five seniors, which isn’t much different than Fraze’ girls team, who loses six seniors off of its Class 4A champion.

Starting this weekend, the girls will take a trip to Frenship High School in Wolfforth. That camp will consist of somewhere between 15-30 schools, with Portales expected be the only New Mexico school.

The JV and ‘C’ team will partake in the Texico Summer League, and according to Fraze, will even get to take on the Clovis varsity squad. From there, the focus shifts to the camp at Eastern, which includes 25-30 teams from west Texas, New Mexico and possibly Colorado.

Finally, the Rams will head to Colorado to partake in the Pueblo Team Camp, which will include Colorado and likely Kansas schools. For Fraze and company, after losing so many seniors, these summer sessions are especially important this year.

“The summer’s really good, speaking for the varsity level, to allow me to look at potentially what next year’s team is, minus the seniors we’ve had. This is the group we’re gonna work with, and see where we’re weak, where we’re strong, what we need to develop, and kind of where we’re at, and where we need to build from for next year,” Fraze said.

“I’ll have two seniors, Codi Flores and Taylee Rippee. It’ll allow me to see some younger kids mixed in with them, that they haven’t played with before and see what direction we need to go in from where we’re at today. (We see a) tremendous amount (of progress from beginning to end of summer). We couldn’t do it without our summer program.”