J.R. Tidwell/FCT Red Bay’s Kasey Sparks (white) and Alaina Hester (navy) battle for a jump ball during a boy’s basketball camp hosted by girl’s head basketball coach Donnie Roberts at the Red Bay.

RED BAY — Red Bay head coach Donnie Roberts found himself in the Red Bay High School gym yet again last week. This time it was to be the main instructor for a boy’s summer basketball camp hosted by the school.

“This is the fourth year I’ve done a camp lime this for the boys,” Roberts said. “It’s sponsored by Red Bay Parks and Recreation.”

Roberts, the head girl’s basketball coach for the Tigers, hosted a similar camp for girls in the area earlier this summer.

Unfortunately turnout at the boy’s camp was not quite as high as for the girl’s event, but that did not mean that those who participated missed out.

“We were trying to have two different age groups,” Robert said.

“We didn’t have that many junior high boys show up, so we took the six graders and put them with our varsity girls. We focused on giving the boys playing time, but this gives our girls an opportunity to play too.”

Coach Roberts has been hosting a girl’s summer camp for 30 years now, so it was only natural that a boy’s camp be started up eventually.

“It was really the people in the community that wanted us to do a boy’s camp too.” Roberts said. “

We’ve got a good girl’s camp, but we had nothing for the boys. We probably didn’t have as many junior varsity players because Coach [Kevin] Morrow used all of their play dates and the boys are doing things with other sports like baseball and football.”

The kids who attended the camp got to work on different aspects of the game, including fundamentals, which were the main focus of the activities.

“If you don’t learn fundamentals you can’t play the game,” Roberts said.

The older boys at the camp got a chance to scrimmage with and against current members of the Red Bay girl’s varsity basketball team, a group coming off of a second-place finish at last year’s state competition.

Although the camp provided great experience for the young players, Coach Roberts had a focus in mind other than simply putting in work.

“The bottom line is for the kids to try to have a little fun,” he said.