Sports camps keep 'em working hard
Young athletes thrive on the challenge

By RON CHURCHILL
Reporter Contributor

Attendance in the summer sports-camp program has almost tripled in the past five years, said Bob Maxwell, head volleyball coach at UB and a main organizer of the program.

A dozen week-long training sessions for youths are being held this summer. The camps are expected to draw nearly 1,500 athletes before the program ends with women's basketball in early August.

"This is going to be the biggest year we've had," Maxwell said, adding that five years ago, total attendance for the camps was about 500.

"It's grown and grown and grown," he said.

This year, many of the camps began in late June. Some, like the football camp, are overnight camps composed of high-school students from around New York State and – to a lesser extent – from nearby states and Canada, organizers said.

Athletes live in the dormitories, eat in the residence halls, and – according to high-school student Ryan Rogers – "the coaches work you really hard." Rogers, who is entering his sophomore year at West Hill High School near Syracuse, spent a week in the football camp this summer, along with 15 of his teammates. "It's really hard work," he said. "

But will it pay off?

"Definitely," Rogers said. "You get faster and stronger. You get a lot of football in."

Craig Cirbus, head football coach at UB and organizer of the football camp, said approximately 100 youths turned out for this year's first session, which ran from June 28 to July 1.

"They get a heck of a lot of football," Cirbus said, adding that the athletes walk from the Governors residence halls to the old football stadium three times a day. In each of those sessions, they spend nearly three hours concentrating on offense, defense, and special-teams practice.

Cirbus said this year's football camp drew athletes from Michigan, Ohio and Canada, and that the coaching staff concentrates on teaching the fundamentals of the sport, a theme that is present in nearly all of the UB summer camps.

"When they leave here, they know how to play the game," said Ron Torgalski, organizer of the men's basketball camp and an assistant basketball coach at UB.

Unlike football, the men's basketball camp is a day camp. It is divided into sections for youths as young as 8 and as old as 18.

The first session of basketball camp drew 135 youths, and a second session will run from July 27 -31, officials said.

All of the athletes learn "the fundamentals, the rules," Torgalski said. They play two games per day in Alumni Arena and spend a lot of time switching between special stations that place emphasis on learning specific skills.

Most of the sports camps are held on the North Campus, but on the South Campus, softball is the name of the game. In Clark Hall and on the adjacent field, more than 60 women spent a week practicing fielding, hitting, bunting and other softball fundamentals.

Approximately 50 of the women came to the camp for its special emphasis on pitching techniques, said Santo Desain, an organizer of the softball camp for the past eight years and an assistant athletic director at Erie Community College.

Summer Kratz, who will be a senior next year at Wilson High School in Niagara County, attended the camp last year. The right fielder said she came back again this year "because of the people."

In the pool in Alumni Arena, athletes were taught the fundamentals of swimming in two sessions. The first session – which ran from June 29 to July 3 – drew about 50 swimmers, and approximately 120 were expected for both sessions, said Dorsi Raynolds, head coach of women's swimming and co-director of the swimming camp with Assistant Swim Coach Marrie Neumer.

During the week, the swimmers are videotaped with an underwater camera, and the coaches give them pointers on their style when the tapes are played back in a nearby classroom.

On Monday, it's freestyle; on Tuesday, the back stroke; Wednesdays are for the butterfly stroke, and Thursday is reserved for the breast stroke.

"Each afternoon we review the videotapes, and each afternoon (the swimmers) go home with a sheet," Neumer said. The sheet is a kind of progress report with pointers and areas that might need attention.

The cost of attending a summer sports camp varies, depending on whether athletes register for a full-or half-day, and if they choose to stay in the residence halls, Maxwell said, adding that football and wrestling are the only camps with an "overnight" option. Half-day camps start at approximately $75, and a full-day, overnight camp can cost about $250.

Also offered this summer were men's soccer, women's soccer, track and field, and women's basketball.