After a largely dormant summer, sports camps and clinics are slowly starting up again. Over at Bishop Fenwick, the annual Heart & Hustle Girls Basketball Clinic went off without a hitch this week and everyone involved couldn’t be happier.
“It was so great to get back out and just do some basketball things again,” said Fenwick girls basketball coach Adam DeBaggis, who runs the clinic. “The whole week went better than we ever could have imagined. The weather was perfect, the enthusiasm was way up and everyone was just really enjoying their time here.”
This year’s clinic looked quite a bit different from normal years. DeBaggis got four portable hoops to put up outside on the Bishop Fenwick tennis courts for the four-day affair, with different stations set up around the courts for specific drills. The latest EEA guidelines for youth and amateur sports prohibit basketball scrimmages and games at this point in time, so DeBaggis and his varsity Crusaders team — who along with his assistant coaches served as instructors at the clinic — had to make due.
“In a normal year, we have 16 hours of clinic time total,” said DeBaggis. “Usually about half of that time is made up of scrimmages and games, so we had to find a lot more drills to fill up the rest of the time. It obviously wasn’t ideal, but we all made the best of it.”
The makeup of the clinic-goers this year was the same as in other years, but in understandably smaller numbers. After having 60 players come out to the clinic in 2019, 39 players came out for this year’s festivities.
“It actually ended up being the perfect number of players because the guidelines say we can’t be in groups of more than 50, and with the number of instructors added in we came in right about at that number,” said DeBaggis.
The players at the clinic include a number of incoming sixth-, seventh-, eighth-, and ninth-graders from Catholic schools around the North Shore, with a few public school players included as well.
Possibly the biggest benefit of the week for DeBaggis was being able to see and talk to not only his varsity team, but also the 12 incoming Fenwick freshmen who plan to play basketball.
“The biggest thing that hurt us this year was that there was no summer basketball, which is normally when I get to meet a lot of these kids and see how they play,” said DeBaggis. “So it was great to get all of the players together to at least make contact and see how they’re doing and everything. Plus, I hadn’t seen any of my varsity players since March, so it was nice to get out there and see them again.”
As for the potential upcoming season, which the MIAA has recently ruled will begin on Nov. 30, DeBaggis remains hopeful and cautiously optimistic. The Crusaders are projected to have a strong team in 2020-2021, with 10 returning players as well as two transfers coming in.
“I’m always optimistic about things,” said DeBaggis. “It’s certainly going to be a challenge to play as things are now, but we’ll see and we’ll roll with the punches. It would certainly be disappointing if we didn’t get to play this season because we have an opportunity to have a great year, but that’s far from the most important thing. We have to make sure we do things safely and correctly, and we’ll just take it from there.”
