OKC Thunder camp successful in Lawton YMCA

Chaos broke out when the whistle blew.

More than 50 kids started dribbling their Oklahoma City Thunder-themed basketball around half of a basketball court.

The kids, all wearing identical white T-shirts, tried to knock each other’s basketballs away while maintaining possession of their own. As players lost their ball, the boundaries shrunk along with the competitor pool.

That was one of many drills conducted at the Thunder Youth Basketball Hustle Camp at the Lawton Family YMCA on Tuesday. The camp was designed with the intention of providing kids the opportunity to grow in the fundamentals of the game and engage in an active, team-centric environment.

John Veal III is the youth sports director at the Lawton Family YMCA. He said his YMCA developed a relationship with the OKC Thunder five years ago. In addition to Thunder youth leagues, the YMCA hosts basketball camps for kids aged 6-14.

“This is the second year in a row we’ve hosted a summer camp,” Veal III said. “So Oklahoma City Thunder, they send their whole staff down. They run the whole camp. Put this on for the kids. And the kids have a blast.”

Veal said there were 53 participants in the morning session for younger campers, and about the same amount of older kids registered for the afternoon session. Each camper got to go home with a T-shirt, basketball, water bottle and a ticket to an Oklahoma City Thunder home game next season.

Aubrey Dawson, 7, was one of the campers enthusiastically participating in the drills and scrimmages.

“My favorite part was dribbling through the cones at the start of camp,” Dawson said. “I got first place.”

Coaches conducted various drills to instruct players in defense, ball-handling, shooting and layups.

Burke Bailey, a guard on the University of Central Oklahoma basketball team, was one of about a dozen coaches helping run the camp. He travels the state with other coaches to put the clinics on.

“(Coaches) are actually employed by the Oklahoma City Thunder,” Veal III said. “They have a youth camps department. All these guys came down from Oklahoma City. They work for the Thunder. They travel the state doing these camps. I think they’ve done like 96 camps in the last year or so.”

Bailey worked with Javion Battle, among others.

“I had a lot of fun,” Battle said. “My favorite part was dribbling while the coaches chased us.”