Setting Up Camp
Combines Becoming Vital For Prep Athletes
By Ray Mernagh and Chris Peak

"You've arrived!" proclaimed the sign at the players' entrance to the 2004 Reebok ABCD Camp in Teaneck, New Jersey.

OJ Mayo was turning the final possession of the Underclassmen All Star game into his own personal showcase. Crossing over his dribble, Mayo ran clock as the crowd inched forward in their seats, eager to see the 6-4 wiz-kid either penetrate or pull up for the winning jumper in the face of his heralded defender, Daequan Cook.

Instead, Mayo went retro and brought to mind a young Magic Johnson, zipping a one handed bounce pass through traffic to teammate Bill Walker. Walker banged home the winning dunk, and he and Mayo walked off with Co- MVP honors for the West. "Guys go right at each other at ABCD," says new Eastern Michigan Coach Charles Ramsey.

The previous night it had been premier big men Greg Oden and Derrick Caracter going at each other. These five players were the main attractions at ABCD. Coaches and fans alike came to see if they could protect their reputations or if any new challengers would rise to the occasion - Tracy McGrady was a virtual unknown when he arrived at ABCD before his senior year. A year later he was a lottery pick after his breakout summer camp performance.

Somewhere in the gym, Reebok's Senior Director of Grassroots Basketball, Sonny Vaccaro, was smiling. He'd once again beaten his two former employers and competitors, Nike and Adidas, to the punch. How did Vaccaro get all this young talent - Mayo and Walker were rising sophomores, while Oden, Caracter, and Cook were going into their junior years of high school - to come to his camp? He paid for it, if somewhat indirectly.

When Vaccaro left Adidas in 2003, taking the ABCD name with him to Reebok, he immediately made Oden and Mayo his top priorities and signed their summer teams to sponsorship deals. In exchange, Vaccaro was guaranteed that both young players, along with their well-regarded teammates, would be loyal foot soldiers - wearing Reeboks wherever they played. And attend his ABCD Camp of course.

Influx Of Camps

In recent years - driven as much by shoe companies as by aiding in the recruiting process - combine camps in both football and basketball have become institutions. This year Nike held 11 football combines while Adidas, in its third year as sponsor of the Elite camp series, held six. There are three main basketball camps - the Reebok ABCD Camp in Jersey, the Nike All American Camp in Indianapolis and the Adidas Superstar Camp in Suwanee, Georgia.

For Greg Gattuso, football recruiting coordinator at Pitt and former head coach at Duquesne, the camps provide information but must be taken in perspective. "These camps are nice but to me the real evaluation goes on with film. You may get a quarterback that throws great but falls apart as soon as he gets hit. These camps don't have pads, so you have no way of seeing how a guy stands up to contact."

Still, the camps can be valuable tools in the recruiting process, particularly for smaller football programs.

"The thing I found at Duquesne," Gattuso says, "was that we didn't have the resources they have here at Pitt or some of the bigger schools. You can cover a lot of ground at those camps and see kids that you'd never be able to see. I also think it's a great resource for the kids. I would go there looking for the guys that other people were missing."

Joe Butler has been running his Metro Index camp for 25 years. "The idea was to run a skills camp with the potential to attract college coaches," Butler says of his camp's origins. "When we started it was the only camp of its kind across the country. Then about five or six years ago the shoe companies started getting involved."

While the shoe companies boast larger resources for their camps, Butler's still holds some distinction. The Metro camp runs for four days, as opposed to the one-day combines held by Nike and Adidas. Metro also seems to focus less on measurables and more on the development of players.

"My camp is not a track camp, it's a football skills camp," he explains. "We promote skill work and we promote football players in a realistic fashion." Pitt quarterback Tyler Palko, who spent his share of time at combines in high school, thinks that there are a lot of similarities across all the available camps.

"They're all prospect camps where coaches can evaluate you. All of those camps are really about putting your skills on display and showing what you can do," Palko said. "The thing I liked about it was competing against the top players in the country and seeing where I stood."

As far as the basketball camps, ABCD has long been seen as the most player-friendly of the three shoe camps. The Nike Camp is one that a lot of coaches, although they won't say it on record, probably prefer.

"There are more rules at the Nike Camp," says Basketball Times Editor John Akers. "They have a three pass rule before a shot, no stats, access to players is kept at a minimum and there is no all star game. Reebok (ABCD) has a much looser hip-hop feel to it, there are running stats on all the players, and they even have an MC during the final all star game. My sense is the players and reporters like Reebok more, while the coaches prefer Nike."

Finding The Right Camp

Kevin Rock and Paul Faila of St. Francis University run the Essential Quarterback Camp at Pine Richland High School. The Essential Camp is somewhat unique in that it doesn't focus on displaying player talents.

"It's not for college coaches," Rock says. "We encourage high school coaches to come to have a clinic atmosphere. It's not a recruiting thing.

"We've approached it to not only help the quarterbacks, but also help the guys coaching the quarterbacks," says Rock. "We felt there was a need for it, to help coach the position better from a skills standpoint."

So how do kids pick between camps? "It usually comes down to affiliation," says head of Adidas Grassroots Daren Kalish, "like right now kids like Mayo and Oden are the poster boys for Reebok. Other kids see those two going to ABCD so they want to go there."

But lack of affiliation can hurt good players. Mike Fox coached a team out of Indianapolis that wasn't sponsored and he found it difficult to get his players into any of the three camps.

"I had AJ Ratliff on my team. We're talking a future Indiana Hoosier, Indiana Mr. Basketball winner, a top-50 player nationally," says Fox. "I finally got AJ into Nike Camp his junior year. It was like pulling teeth."

Since joining an Adidas sponsored program, Fox no longer has problems placing his players. "We've got about 10 kids going to elite camps this summer." Once a player chooses a college though, affiliations can change. Josh McRoberts was an AAU teammate of Greg Oden. McRoberts was a "Reebok kid" all the way - until, that is, he committed to play college ball at Duke where Coach K is a "Nike guy."

McRoberts went to Nike camp. Affiliation folks, affiliation.

Chris Peak covers recruiting and college sports for Rivals.com.

Ray Mernagh is the publisher of Hoopfactor.com and is authoring a book on the Mid-American Conference.