Athens High School wrapped up its final day of the Golden Eagles Basketball Camp Friday, June 2, and some of the young camp goers had glowing reviews of the lessons they learned on the hardwood.

“It was fun,” Eli Anderson, son of Athens varsity boys coach Danny Anderson, said. “We did a lot of things to make me better as an individual person and in the game, so I learned a lot of cool stuff.”

Emmett McClary, another youth camper, reflected on the importance of individual practice.

“I learned you should just try your best all the time and play at home a lot if you really want to get better,” McClary said.

Most of the young and enthusiastic attendees expressed their enjoyment of the different basketball skills they learned during the three-day summer camp.

Ryan Hendrix — son of Athens basketball legend Richard Hendrix, who helped coach at the camp — was one of the kids who showed off some of the dribbling moves he learned from his dad, Coach Anderson, and varsity girls coach Capriee Tucker over the course of the camp.

“It’s been amazing and the highlight of our summer,” Tucker said. “When I see these young girls out here, they really love to play basketball, and they don’t mind being competitors.”

The three coaches at the camp would have been outmanned and overrun if they did not have the help of some of the current Athens basketball players as assistant coaches at the camp.

“This year we had about 170 kids show up,” Anderson said. “It really means a lot to me, because as coaches we try and set a good example and be a mentor to our players, so it gives them that ownership of them now being a mentor to the kids here.”

Richard Hendrix shared a similar sentiment to the hard work the high schoolers put in at the Golden Eagles Basketball Camp.

“If you can volunteer your time to come in here and work with the youth, then you really have something special about yourself,” Hendrix said. “I hope that at their young ages of 15 through 18, they can understand how important it is to set the example for these kids.”

After the camp was officially over, a few of the high school players stuck around to talk about their experience as coaches over the last three days. Two rising seniors on the Athens boys team, Sam Boyles and Andrew Boggs, humorously conveyed their love of the camp.

“It was a new experience, to say the least. Now I kind of have a feeling of what my coaches have to go through,” Boyles said.

“I think I may have got the better end of the stick, because I got the older kids,” Boggs said. “But over time they developed a lot so it was good to see.”