Camp of Champs coming to Norway
NORWAY — A once highly popular summer youth basketball camp will make its return to the Upper Peninsula and Dickinson County this summer.
Back after a 21-year hiatus is Jamie Angeli’s Camp of Champs. The 2024 version will be held July 15-18 at Norway-Vulcan Area Schools.
“I feel incredibly excited and fortunate to be able to bring my basketball camp back to the U.P. after all of these years. I’m looking forward to seeing so many parents who were once campers themselves, now creating a new Camp of Champs era for their children,” said Angeli, an Iron River native, West Iron County and University of Wisconsin-Stout basketball standout.
The Camp of Champs made several stops over the 20 years it was held including Crystal Falls, Iron River, Florence, Wis., Niagara, Wis., Iron Mountain, Kingsford, Norway, Bark River and Ironwood.
Angeli, a former varsity boys basketball coach at both Norway and Kingsford High School, left the U.P. in 1997 to join Head Coach Steve Lavin’s staff at UCLA.
Since the last Camps in 2003, Angeli has made various coaching stops, literally all over the world. His last season on the UCLA staff was 2003.
“Since leaving UCLA I have been a professional head coach in the Middle Eastern countries of Qatar and Kuwait, and then made assistant coaching stops at the University of South Florida and Seattle University,” Angeli said in a recent phone interview.
In 2019, Angeli retired from coaching at CCNY and remains as the associate director of athletics.
“I think the biggest thing I’ve missed the most in the last 21 years is the daily interactions with the campers. More specifically, watching them develop confidence and enjoyment for this great game,” Angeli stated.
The camp will have two daily sessions for the entire four days.
Session one will be boys and girls grades 4-8, beginning at 9 a.m. with early drop-off with an open gym shooting session, which is optional. Camp time will be 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Session two will be boys and girls grades 9-12, beginning at 1 p.m. with an optional early drop off open gym shooting session. Camp time is 2 to 5 p.m.
The camp already has approximately 100 campers registered in just over three weeks online. The projection is around 150 campers.