KEALAKEKUA — The summer sports season is all about the kids, with many summer camps being offered in a variety of sports nearly every week.
This week marked the beginning of the annual Konawaena Stingrays basketball camp, which has been around so long, Konawaena High School girls head coach Bobbie Awa can’t even remember how many times the camp has been held.
The 2018 edition of the annual event drew an impressive 121 kids to the Ellison Onizuka Gym in Kealakekua.
The camp was separated into a morning session for less experienced players and an afternoon session for older kids.
“We have so many new kids this year. All the new faces, it is really nice to see,” Awa said. “We have kids from our program but also other programs from all over the state. We have kids from around the Big Island, and from Maui and Oahu.”
Surely the success of Konawaena’s high school program, which is fed by the Stingrays’ program, and led by arguably the best coach in the state, has helped bring in the numbers.
“We have really changed the way we do things,” Awa said. “I used to go to a lot of the West Hawaii schools and hand out fliers to each person for the camp, but now we rely on the newspaper and word of mouth. There is no better advertisement than word of mouth.”
The camp serves as a fundraiser, mostly for the coaches, to help offset the cost of travel to takes teams from the Stingrays’ program to various tournaments around Hawaii and on the mainland.
This summer, Stingrays travel teams are set to go to tournaments in Oregon, Chicago, Las Vegas, Maui, Kauai and Oahu. The girls are also hosting a tournament this weekend at Old Airport Park’s Kekuaokalani Gymnasium.
“The camp really helps to pay for air, room and travel for the coaches so we don’t have to take away from the fundraising of the kids,” Awa said. “Some of the money will also go to the kids to help them out with room and transportation.”
The camp serves as a valuable learning tool for the kids in attendance, many of whom are picking up a basketball for the first time. However, it is also a learning experience for Stingrays players, who help teach the kids in the morning session before attending the camp in the afternoon session.
It does not always go smoothly at first, especially for the boys and girls thrown into a teaching roll for the first time.
“They were a little like scrambled eggs, not really sure what to do without us giving them direction on the first day,” Awa said. “The kids come in and they are a little scared but I think the players more were scared of the kids. They are doing a much better job today helping out.”
For Awa, the camp is a good way to help her kids understand that they are becoming mentors and roll models to the next generation of players. That means they must be active volunteers at the annual camp.
“We don’t want them just standing around and watching, we want them to go out there and help out,” Awa said. “They did a good job.”
The Stingray’s basketball camp will run through Thursday. The morning session runs from 9 a.m. to noon for kids ages 5-12. The afternoon session, for ages 12-16, goes from 1:30-4:30 p.m.