Your future, our focus
Basketball players from around the Big Horn Basin descended on Northwest College to improve their skills over three days at the Trapper & Panther Summer Camp.
The camp was run by Northwest College women’s coach Lauren Davis and Powell High School girls’ basketball coach Chelsea Buher — bringing in kids from kindergarten to high school seniors to receive help teaching and improving their skills. The camp brought in dozens of athletes from all over the area.
“This is where great players are made is in the summer,” Buher said. “It needs to start young and that is why coach Davis and I decided to drop our level all the way down to first grade — even getting a kindergartner in here.”
Buher said that the goal is to get kids as excited about the sport as the coaches are, hoping to help grow the sport from the ground up.
She said that the plan for the camp was to do different drills but be continually working on the same type of skill.
“They may not always be thinking about doing the same skill in a different drill until we point it out,” Buher said. “It’s kind of like an ‘ah-ha’ moment where you can work on the same skills by doing different drills. We felt like every kid got better in some capacity.”
Buher said that they were able to have some kids from her high school team to come out and help teach drills during the morning session before competing in the afternoon.
“It just builds their fan base — this is who looks up to them,” Buher said. “High school kids kind of forget that kids that age can look up to them even though they feel like they are just in high school. You are a role model to those kids in real life and not just somebody they watch on TV.”
She said that she and Davis make a good team because they bounce ideas off each other and bring different ideas forward that they use either with the Panthers or the Trappers.
Buher said that she was grateful to work with the kids that came to compete in the afternoon that included several players already on the Panthers and multiple incoming freshmen to her program next year.
“No matter what age you are, you can always work on perfecting your craft and continue to build your toolbox,” Buher said. “That’s what those girls are in there doing and I appreciate that they are going to benefit from that in the long run as they continue to see their game grow.”