Tough love and discipline at Rising Stars camp

FARMINGTON

Just half an hour into the 2019 Rising Stars Boys Basketball Camp, Wyatt Dearen understood what he had gotten himself into.

Dearen felt as if he had been at the camp all week and began to feel the aches.

“I was thinking we were an hour in and we went and looked at the time, and we were just 30 minutes in,” Dearen said. “We were just tired and gassed after the first two sessions. It was rough the first day.”

The organizers had planned a rigorous camp. It was designed to be competitive, disciplined and beneficial.

Rising Stars instructor Ryneldi Becenti said the camp is known for its competitiveness, which was demonstrated throughout the week of June 11 to 15 at Navajo Prep.

“The kids who were here before knew my expectations and would tell the other kids, ‘You got to hustle, she’s going to tell you this, you got to make sure you’re paying attention,’” Becenti said. “That’s what makes me happy, that they’ve kept what I’ve told them to do.”

The camp had 27 participants ranging from sixth grade to incoming high school seniors.

Participants came from the reservation and the region. Half were new and half returners.

Dearen, 13, from Farmington, was one of the newbies.

Having played on a traveling team out of Shiprock, Dearen said he was encouraged to look into the camp and was happy he did.

He quickly learned what to expect the rest of the week: “That it was going to be hard work and that I was going to improve in my game,” he said. “I learned to just play better defense and better offense, all the trapping spots on the court, and improved my ball-handling skills.”

KeHugh Swan, 15, from Thoreau, New Mexico, said the rigor is what keeps him going back for more.

A veteran of the camp, KeHugh said he craved the discipline and knew what he was getting himself into.

“I felt like I did a lot better this time around,” he said. “Coach really helped push us a lot harder this year. There’s a lot more encouraging kids this year too.”

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