CESIS: A year in the life of . . .: 3-PUNKT CAMP -- I'm Going Pro, Baaabbbbyyyyy!

What a great day!

The Riga Barons men's basketball team is the best pro team in Latvia and compete very well throughout the Baltics (Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania). We knew they were going to send some coaches and players out to the camp on Saturday.

The original plan was for them to come to the camp and demonstrate using their players and coaches. I happened to be working with the oldest and most skilled campers when they arrived. We were running our drills and the pros and coach just stood and watched. After a few minutes one of the camp organizers came over and said that the pros were NOT going to run their drills. I'm shaking my head and said that just doesn't make sense. He said no, YOU are going to take the pro players and our campers and run YOUR drills with them.

It didn't take much convincing to get me to coach pro players! One of they guys was the MVP of the league and is a really good player. The others were good guys as well.

We brought our entire groups of campers to the gym from the other locations and had them watch the skills and drills. Our campers that were running the drills with the pros were, of course, impressed that they were on the same court with the pros. The intensity level picked up to say the least!

We ended the practice segment by scrimmaging using a combination of pros and campers.

Afterwards we were able to play some shooting and dribbling games for smaller kids and then the players addressed the group. I don't know what they said but the kids seemed to enjoy it. Thanks to the Barons for taking time to do this. We appreciated it so much.

I've had the opportunity to coach good high school players. I've even had a few Div. 1 NCAA players that I've been lucky enough to coach. Today was the first time I've had the opportunity to coach pro players on the floor. As I've always said -- "Great players will make an average coach look pretty good!!"