Austin Hemmingson | Daily Press Clayton Castor, a former Gladstone basketball player and coach, defends camper Cade Franks (left) during a ball-handling drill at the YMCA basketball camp Thursday morning at Bay College. Castor teamed up with professional basketball player Olivia Nash of Escanaba (back center) to run the camp for the second straight year Monday through Thursday morning. In the back, Nash observes other campers doing the drill. The camp is for boys and girls in grades 7-12.

ESCANABA — For the second straight year, a couple of local prominent basketball figures spent the past week teaching the game to boys and girls in grades 7-12.

Olivia Nash and Clayton Castor returned to the YMCA gym at Bay College Monday through Thursday morning to run the second year of a new basketball camp.

Nash is a former all-state player at Escanaba and a former standout at Division 1 Oakland University. She started her professional career in Finland in 2016 after graduating from Oakland and goes back to Germany at the beginning of August to continue her career overseas after being home for the summer.

Castor is a former player and coach at Gladstone, who also played college ball at UW-Marinette. He graduated from Gladstone in 1998 and coached the boys’ varsity team for two years in 2015 and 2016, leading the Braves to a district title in ’16. He’s currently an assistant coach for the men’s team at Bay College.

The idea for the camp started last summer when Gary Nash, Olivia’s father, approached Castor to see if he’d be interested in doing the camp with Olivia.

“I was really excited for the opportunity,” Castor said. “It’s not very often a guy like me gets the chance to be in the gym with a player and a coach of her caliber. I jumped on the opportunity.”

Nash, who graduated from Escanaba in 2012, simply wanted to give back to the community.

“I think just growing up with the Y and coming back after college, I just knew I wanted to give back to the community because I grew up here and everyone was so supportive,” she said. “I actually suggested Clayton because I know how good of a coach he is. His kids are great, so I know what he’s capable of. We’re a good team.”

Nash noted a main emphasis of the camp was to give older kids an opportunity.

“When you think of the YMCA, you think of little kid camps. So, last year we just tried to start to get away from that a bit and make it more advanced,” she said. “We’re just trying to bring a different dynamic than any other camp. We touch on the basics, but I think we try to emphasize defense and doing little detailed things that will make these kids better players.”

Castor wanted to see improvement in each individual player.

“My goal is just to make every player here walk out of the gym a better player than they were when they walked in, and at least for them to take one or two things away from the camp,” he said. “I also want them to walk away from here with drills to do on their own if they want. We can make them better, but there’s no substitution for them doing it on their own time.

“I just want them to spend more time with the ball. The more time you spend with the ball in your hands, the better you’re going to get.”

Castor enjoys the amount of one-on-one time he gets to spend with the campers.

“For Liv and I, we’re not out holding this camp just trying to make money off of it. I don’t think either one of us makes a dollar off of it,” he said.

“I think that’s a real advantage to what we’re doing here is that it’s not about money. A lot of camps are all about numbers and how many kids can i pump into the gym and how much money can I make. I think a great thing about doing it here is our numbers per camper is really good, so we get to spend more individual time with them. I know we’ve accomplished our goal. Parents or players come up to us afterwards and ask for advice, or even just want to spend time with you. I think that tells you that not only have we made them a better basketball player, but also that we’ve developed a relationship with them. I think that’s pretty cool.”

Nash echoed those comments, while also citing working the kids a little harder leads to more improvement.

“I think (the camp) went really well,” she said. “The kids have really focused, they come back every day. We’ve had a few dwindle out, but that’s the difference between the good players and the great players. Having us be a little harder on them and expecting more out of them is good, especially for kids now-a-days when a lot of things are kind of handed to them. I’ve seen an improvement in four days of work.”

The camp, which brought in around 20 kids per day, focused on the fundamentals of the game, and specifically defense.

“(We’ve been working on) a lot of defense, as far as like jumping to the ball and jamming the cutter,” Nash said. “I think they touch on it with that age group, but the kids don’t usually understand it fully and wonder why they’re doing it. We’ve made an emphasis on that. We’ve had a lot of competitive drills too, just to keep it interesting. We’ve also had a lot of regular drills like shooting and two-ball dribbling.”

Despite an unknown future schedule, Nash says she hopes to continue with the camp.

“I always plan on coming home in the summer, and it’s always nice to dedicate some time to help show these kids that they can achieve anything no matter where they’re from as long as they work hard,” she said.

Castor agreed.

“I’ll be in the gym as much as Olivia lets me be in the gym with her,” he joked.