Former University of Tennessee basketball star C.J. Watson held a basketball camp last Saturday at Patterson Park.
“It feels great, this is what I wanted to do,” said Watson, who played for the NBA’s Golden State Warriors last season. “I always wanted to give back and have some basketball camps for the kids.”
His charity, “Quiet Storm,” along with Hope-n-Hoops, the Murfreesboro Parks and Recreation Department and the Bradley Academy Cultural Center, help put on the event.
The title for his nonprofit organization came from his nickname growing up that was given to him by his sister.
Hope-n-Hoops CEO Benny Smith runs the Cavaliers, a local 17 and under AAU basketball team that is probably the best-kept secret in the area.
The team, made up of players from around Rutherford County, won super-regional tournaments last month in Atlanta and St. Louis. With those victories, the Cavs earned a berth into the AAU Division I National Championships at Orlando in late July. The team is trying to draw support so they could attend four other key tournaments before heading to ESPN’s Wide World of Sports Complex.
“We try to enhance the life of youth athletes,” Smith said.
Watson, who now resides in Las Vegas, is a restricted free agent. He has also spent his professional basketball career playing in Italy and Greece and participated in the NBA’s developmental league for Rio Grande Valley Vipers before joining the Warriors during the 2008-09 season.
Watson’s family lives in the area, and he is currently back in school working on his degree.
“He is a great role model, and he is a super young man,” Benny Smith, CEO of Hope-n-Hoops said, “He has been through a lot of struggles to make it in the NBA.”
The basketball camp was not the only event going on during the afternoon R & B artist Dean “HB” Vitale gave a musical performance and Holloway High School students presented the production of “Toe Tag Monologues”.
Byron Stringer, a Las Vegas policeman, wrote the Monologues that teach students about life lessons and peer pressure. Stringer helped the Holloway students prepare for their performance.
There were some festivities going on outdoors including a petting zoo filled with goats, cows and chickens and a course that tested the physical well-being of the people that dared to give it a try.
The organizers message for the event was to stress health, education, and physical development for the youth.
David Hunter can be contacted at sports@murfreesboropost.com. |
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