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Building for the future

School is out, summer is upon us and many kids have been spending their time in the Alpena High School gyms, participating in the annual summer camp.

The four day camp began on Monday and will finish up tomorrow. It has been a yearly tradition for Alpena boys basketball head coach John Pintar as he has run the camp for 18 of its 21 years.

“We’ve been doing this ever since I got here and I feel like it’s a great way to start of the summer for all of these kids and get them in the gym. Hopefully they will pick some things up and use the rest of the summer to get out, work on things and become better basketball players,” Pintar said.

It is always an important camp for the future of Alpena High basketball. During Pintar’s time running this camp and coaching the Wildcats, he has seen many kids attend this camp and turn out to be future varsity players.

“The fortunate thing is I’ve been here long enough to watch and I’ve seen so many kids that have started here and been able to see them develop and grow as players. This is what you have to do, I tell all of them that you have to practice. It doesn’t matter what you play, if you don’t practice you won’t be successful at it and this is the beginning for them to practice,” Pintar said.

Along with Pintar, many of his current varsity players are there helping out and giving back to the same camp that most of them came through and helped them get to the point where they are at now varsity players.

“It’s really nice to be here and see our program grow along with being able to see new kids come up and do well, it really benefits our program,” Alpena varsity player Cam DeCaire said.

The goal of the camp is to have each of the campers pick up a couple different things that they can focus on and improve on in order to get better, along with getting some of the kids active to start the summer.

The camp ranges from grades third to eighth and after warming up, the kids are separated into groups based on their grade and go through a number of drills during the two hours at the gym.

“It’s an exciting time to see the kids come here, be active, meet some friends and learn something, I’ve always enjoyed it. I want it to be fun because it is summer time, but I hope they can pick up a few things and the camp helps them to improve so I can hopefully coach them one day,” Pintar said.

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