‘Learning how to think basketball’

Spirit of Hoops brings skills to rural kids

CROWNPOINT

As a right-handed person, Kristian Hale had to work a little harder to coordinate himself with his non-dominant hand.

Hale used his left hand to go through some basketball exercises at the recent two-day Spirit of Hoops basketball camp at Crownpoint Middle School on Tuesday afternoon.

“That was the hardest part,” Hale said. “I’m not used to dribbling on my left hand.”

Hale said he doesn’t know much about basketball but he learned a lot during the two-day camp, which was organized by former Crownpoint boys basketball coach Shawn Miller.

“Spirit of Hoops was started by Mountain Chief Institute with David Powless serving as president,” Miller said in an email response. “The organization first approached me in 2013 with the idea of providing a free basketball camps in Native communities. We held our first Spirit of Hoops Basketball Camp here in Crownpoint.”

Miller said the nonprofit organization not only provides a quality basketball camp but also tries to “enrich the lives of our Native youth with respect to their culture identity.”

“We have them value the importance of who they are as Native Americans,” he said. “We also implement and try to imprint the importance of education. We want them to build etiquette skills that will help them succeed.”

Miller said some parents can’t afford to send their kids to camps in big cities so a goal of Spirit of Hoops is to bring their camps to rural areas. To date, Miller said the nonprofit organization has held 24 basketball camps over the summer with over 7,000 participants.

“We want all of our campers to experience the same things they’ll get at a camp that charges a fee,” said Miller, who added that the coaches at these camps are certified.

The Crownpoint camp alone had over 60 participants for both sessions that pleased camp coach Chris Murphy.

“We really had some good participation numbers,” Murphy said. “A lot of the older kids came out for the afternoon session. We did have less participations with the younger group but I am really happy with the numbers we have.”

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