Justin St. Ours | Daily Press Escanaba basketball coach Tracy Hudson (center) instructs boys entering grades seven through nine Tuesday at the Esky basketball camp in Escanaba.

ESCANABA — Boys of all ages are learning and improving their basketball fundamentals this week. The 23rd summer Eskymos’ basketball camp is in session through Thursday, and Esky basketball coach Tracy Hudson sees it as an important event from many different angles.

“What I always say to the kids is that it’s not the camp itself, but it’s what you take from the camp,” Hudson said.

The camp is sectioned into different time slots for different age groups, and it extends from first through ninth grade.

“If you’re going to run a basketball program, you have to run it K through 12,” Hudson said. “I’ve always been a believer in that.”

Hudson emphasized the focus on fundamentals, no matter the age group.

“We try to give kids the fundamentals at a young age,” he said. “We’re trying to create a basketball environment where kids want to come and play and be a part of it. Not every kid that I’m going to coach is going to play at the varsity level, so the goal is for them to have fun, to expose them to the fundamentals of basketball, to teach them to compete and maybe to apply those things, not only on the basketball court, but in life.

“The biggest thing we usually start with is ball handling. When you’re dealing with young basketball campers, the long-term things are hard to develop. You want kids to have proper shooting technique and ball handling, and those things aren’t created short-term. We can teach defense, we can teach rebounding and we can teach aggressiveness in the short-term when kids get older.”

An obstacle, even with the younger players, is bad habits.

“In today’s game, it’s all the about the three and the fancy layups, so we’ve got to break that habit,” Hudson said. “We’ve got to teach them to try to take shots close to the basket. A two-pointer was cool back in the 70s, but it works. Even little kids who can barely get the ball up; everyone wants to shoot a three.”

He also places a lot of focus on teamwork and the ability to help your team cultivate success.

“Another thing we stress is teamwork,” he said.

“We haven’t had a lot of 1,000-point scorers, but we always try to put four or five kids in double figures. We want the kids sharing the ball. That’s something that we stress, even at the younger levels. Understanding, even at a young level, how can I help my team or what can I do to help my team instead of being out for (yourself) is important.

“We tell them that we’re just kind of a guide, but the best players that we’ve had in Escanaba are the self-made ones. They’re the players who are looking to increase their knowledge of the game. They’re going to the YMCA, or they’re going to the park. When everyone else is watching TV or playing Fortnite they’re out working on their game. Come here and get the knowledge, and then you can go out on your own and expand on it in the right way.”

Hudson believes some of the more important things a player can take away from the camp are ephemeral.

“In basketball, you deal with a lot of adversity, and we want them to take the adversity on the court and use that in the classroom, or use it in their personal lives so that they can push through it when things aren’t going so well,” he said.

The camp also acts as one of the fundraising opportunities for Escanaba’s basketball program, but Hudson finds one of the more rewarding aspects to be the pride it can instill in attendees.

“For this, it’s an exhausting week, but it’s a very rewarding week,” he said. “When a kid comes out of the gym and he gains confidence and a smile and a T-shirt to wear to the fourth of July. … You know, it’s something they look forward to when school’s out, and wearing their shirt around and feeling like, ‘I’m an Escanaba basketball player, and my team went to the sweet 16 this year and we had a good year.’ Pride in your school and wearing the orange and black and feeling good about it.”