New Orleans — Year-two of the Tamika Catchings Legacy Tour Basketball Clinic was another huge success, providing around 50 kids lessons in the game and a chance to learn from one of the best.
“They go out and you can tell they had fun,” Catchings said. “My number one rule in all the clinics that we do is that the kids have fun.”
She keeps the camp small so she can really be involved in each of the drills, giving everyone individual coaching.
“I think it’s important for me to be involved,” Catchings said. “More specific, lay-ups are such an important part of our game. Sometimes you can get into clinics and it’s like ‘OK, we’re going to through the lay-up lines that everybody does.’ And you watch the kids shoot lay-ups and it’s just like they’re jumping off the right foot, they’re shooting with the wrong hand, they’re doing this wrong, they’re doing that wrong. So I think for me it’s just more of I want to teach them the right way. We only have a short amount of time but you hope that you give them enough stuff and enough things that they can go home and practice.”
“Tamika Catchings wants to have a personal relationship with these kids,” said President and CEO of the Greater New Orleans Sports Foundation Jay Cicero. “She wants to personally effect them in a positive way and that’s part of the reason why she does these camps. She keeps it to about 50-60 kids. She doesn’t two or three hundred kids here– although that’d be nice– she wants to make sure it’s the right amount of kids where she and her staff can reach them and positively effect them.”
And the decision to host a camp in New Orleans stems from her desire to reach every corner of the country– especially areas that don’t have a professional women’s basketball team.
“I want to hit every single state,” Catchings said. “New Orleans is obviously a big market with the Pelicans here. No WNBA presence so– well now you have a WNBA presence with Swin Cash coming. Really excited about that. But for me it was about being able to reach all the states that don’t necessarily have WNBA teams but then also being able to find a city that we can go to
Catchings said she plans on coming back to host her third clinic in New Orleans next year, hoping to put it on in early April, when the Women’s Final Four is in town.