Hundreds of young basketball players had the opportunity to learn from a pro in Windsor at the annual NBA basketball camp put on by MPact Mentoring and Athletes R Us.<\/p>\n
“Just teaching these kids life lessons on and off the court, be a part of a team, work for a company, how to struggle through some adversity and how you can grow from that adversity,” said basketball camp coach Ryan Aeschliman.<\/p>\n
Basketball is certainly the focus, but the camp also prioritizes life lessons and mentoring so that the athletes will have success in all areas of life.<\/p>\n
“The ability to see these kids grow, I think it’s a full circle moment for a lot of these kids,” said basketball camp coach Tyriek Belin. “We see them when they get older and they say hey coach, I remember a drill that you taught me. It carried over into regular life.”<\/p>\n
“There are so many carryovers, everything we do, from basketball to life,” added 9-year NBA veteran Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf. “Wherever you go, in your family, in your business, your relationships, your education, you name it.”<\/p>\n
Abdul-Rauf worked with the campers on the court and also talked to them about his mindset that took him to the highest levels of the sport.<\/p>\n
“You can be a great athlete but if you have poor character, nobody really wants to be around you,” said Abdul-Rauf. “Humility and character can get you to places that skill and arrogance could never get you.”<\/p>\n
This year, the camp moved to the Day Hill Dome, complete with a court from the Toronto Raptors.<\/p>\n
“Just seeing how camp developed over time, just getting bigger and bigger, more kids and a venue like this at the Day Hill Dome, it’s just been a surreal feeling for me,” said basketball camp coach and former camper Carlos Gonzalez. “Seeing the kids, I see a lot of me in them, a lot of hope, opportunity, a lot of dream chasing, it’s been fun to be able to come back and be able to help them get to where I wanted to go at one point.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hundreds of young basketball players had the opportunity to learn from a pro in Windsor at the annual…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99,32294],"class_list":["post-39795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-windsor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39795","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}