‘Flint’s Basketball Team:’ Mott Women’s Camp Helps Strengthen and Grow the Game Locally

Like any college basketball program, the Mott Community College women’s team takes its role in expanding the game to younger players in the community seriously. That’s why its long-running youth camp has always been an important part of summer for the players and coaching staff.

“At some point in time, you want to be known as Flint’s basketball team,” said coach Ryan Trevithick, who just completed his first season coaching the team. “You want to be a representation of all the young players in the area. I think it’s important for them to know that they have high-level basketball to aspire to and play and a chance to step foot on the floor at Ballenger Fieldhouse. That’s a big deal for youth basketball.”

One tenet of Mott’s youth basketball camps, for both the men’s and women’s programs, has always been affordability. That is increasingly important in an era when many athletes and families are being priced out of youth sports. Trevithick noted that former Michigan State and current Golden State Warriors star Draymond Green recently discussed that concept on his podcast, saying that basketball has shifted from a “poor man’s game to a rich man’s game” because of the cost of things like skills trainers, travel, and more. The Mott women’s team completed the first four-day session of its camp, keeping the cost at $100 for all four days. That provided participants with gym time and 12 hours of instruction from college coaches and players. Comparatively, some trainers are currently charging near that amount per hour for their services.

“The hardest thing about basketball is everybody nowadays believes they have to have some kind of a trainer or you have to have money to be able to play it,” Trevithick said. “We have to do better as leaders in the sport to be able to welcome all who want to play the game and make it available. There’s not a lot of things in this life that are free, there’s a cost of doing business because there’s time that’s being exchanged, there’s air conditioning that needs to be paid for and our gym was very cold this week on a very hot week. But I think it’s pivotal to getting kids an opportunity to see if they enjoy the game at a level that they may not otherwise be able to have the chance to afford. A lot of trainers nowadays are charging $50 to $100 an hour to be able to help develop a skill set, where a camp gives you a chance to, one, improve your skills, and two, learn from people that have been doing it for a while at a high level, and then three, you get to train with other kids from other schools. We’ve got some pretty good programs in the Flint area, and there’s a lot of good rivalries. You train with them at a camp and maybe that first rivalry may start in a game of lightning, you know? Then it translates to middle school, then it translates to high school, and that’s what makes competition great. I think it’s important for us to keep it affordable to be able to make those things possible.”

The program wrapped up their first session of camp July 2, but there is another skills camp session for girls in 5th-8th grades (or 3rd-4th graders who want the challenge of playing up) from 9 a.m. to noon July 20-23. Cost is $100. For questions, contact assistant coach Andrew Talaga at andrew.talaga@mcc.edu or (989) 415-8724. The registration form is at MottBears.com under the ‘Camps’ tab in the main navigation. Trevithick also said that the basketball program is working on a combined camp with Mott’s volleyball program that will allow girls to participate in both sports during the same camp. Details for that will be announced soon on the website.

Although the camps are intended to provide basketball opportunities for young players, they also are a great tool for Mott’s current players to test themselves through teaching the game. Trevithick and assistant coaches Andrew Talaga and Kate McArthur run the camps, but players from the team are heavily involved in instruction as well. Those teaching opportunities reinforce core philosophies of Mott’s program for the players.

“We always talk about how teachers learn the most,” Trevithick said. “We tell them (Mott’s players) to do a drill, and they’ll do it, but if they have to teach and instruct the drill, it has a different perspective for them. Then when they actually get a chance to do the drill back again in practice, they’re like, ‘Oh, I remember these teaching points.’ So subliminally you are getting a mental rep as much as you are the physical one. Communication is huge in our program. And as a coach, as an instructor, you’ve gotta find your voice, and that allows you to find some confidence. That’s important when we’re building out what our roster looks like and what our philosophies and dynamic looks like as a team. We can’t be quiet, we’ve gotta be very confident in our approach, and this is a small piece but an important one to their development and growth.”