Warriors Bring Basketball Camp To El Cerrito

Run, jump-stop, jab, drive, lay-up.

Sound like nonsense? Or simply basketball basics? The kids attending the Warriors summer basketball camp at this week clearly have it down.

In the short 45 minutes I observed, campers warmed up through a routine that included easy jogs to hard sprints and everything in between. The full-court lunges, while keeping your arms perpendicular to your body, produced the most groans. After the routine ended, campers lined up along one wall and were ushered in to a drill that required them to run among four stations, performing a certain basketball skill at each. After each skill received adequate practice, a new one was introduced. 

As put by Steiv Boyd, a coach who has been with the program for 10 years, "The goal of the camp is to introduce kids to the idea of training and practicing to be better basketball players. We want to teach them how working hard and having fun can go together." 

In addition, the camp hopes to introduce the kids to the Warriors team as a community organization. Combined, the Warrriors basketball camps and Junior Warriors service 15,000 Bay Area kids annually, making it the largest community program associated with a professional sports team in the world, Boyd said.

Christmas arrived extremely early for the kids on Monday, when the Warriors' draft picks Jeremy Tyler, Charles Jenkins, and Klay Thompson visited the camp.