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This has been a busy summer for Steve Hardin. The women's basketball coach at Bluefield College had recruiting to finish, then he turned his attention to the development of a new group of players, a group that he could be coaching in the future.

July 14, 2010

BLUEFIELD — This has been a busy summer for Steve Hardin. The women's basketball coach at Bluefield College had recruiting to finish, then he turned his attention to the development of a new group of players, a group that he could be coaching in the future.

Hardin is hosting his second of three summer basketball camps at Bluefield College this week. The first youth hoops summit focused a week on ball handling. This week's event moves the focus to shooting.

"This one is more of a shooting camp," Hardin said. "So we're just starting to work on people's shots and try to get some kids in the community over to Bluefield College and hopefully get some people interested in women's basketball."

Hardin also wants to develop some of the area's younger players by placing a focus on fundamentals.

"I think with the first one, a ball handling and skills camp, and then a shooting camp, I think with the younger kids ... it just overall teaches shooting and dribbling and all kinds of basic skills that are kind-of a lost art in basketball nowadays," Hardin said.

"So I feel like the more education they get on learning how to use those skills, they'll be better off without a doubt."

Hardin welcomed kids between first and 10th grade. Around 10 showed up, trading vacation time for a presence on court.

"We're really small this week," Hardin said. "We had about 30 at the first camp and we're right at 10 or so for this second camp. We're at small numbers, but it still boils to a lot of one-on-one help.

"We've got about five coaches that are helping and we've got a lot of one-on-one and we'll do a lot of individual work as well."

Hardin is hopeful that attendance will increase as the week progresses.

"We picked up two more today, so actually we're right around 12," Hardin said. "By the end of the week, we might be up to 15 because I think there's some coming from the Wade Center. So we might be up to about 18 or so."

The players in attendance this week will spend time shooting, shooting and shooting some more. Hardin will work with them on inside and outside shots, as well as using available tools and tricks to accelerate each player's development.

"We are just really working on shot progression and learning how to shoot inside-out," Hardin said. "We've actually got a lot of goals that are lowered. We're making the older ones shoot it on the smaller goals as well because you can really work on your shot.

"I know that teams that have won a lot of state championships like Summers County, they're real big on shooting on lower goals as well. So it just really helps your form and gets your shot right so you can get repetition so when you go to the regular 10-foot goal it's kind-of automatic and you do the same thing ...."

Of the 10 players that came out for this camp, Hardin estimates that eight of them were players that attended the ball handling camp he ran in June.

"That's one great thing about my camps. I've been extremely blessed with a lot of returners," Hardin said. "Out of those 30, I think every one of them but two have been before. So we're doing a good job of bringing them back."

He believes that the main reason players keep coming back to his camps is that he always tries to have fresh content in them that will keep them interesting.

"That's one thing I've tried to do this year," Hardin said. "We've had a lot of returners and we want to make it new and each camp in that year new and then from year to year you want to make it different and let them learn new things as well.

"In the first camp, we did tons of ball handling and off-the-dribble stuff. And everything was with the ball in your hand. And then for this camp we really slowed it down and really worked on staying in close and slow it down to really work on your shot. So we've made it totally different than we did the first camp ...."

Hardin is extremely interested in integrating his program further with the community. At very least, he hopes that he can develop local talent that will go on to represent the community proudly.

"There's a lot of girls I think in the Graham area, especially that go to Graham schools that are going to end up being players," Hardin said. "I think a lot of seventh graders that came a lot of years just keep on getting better and better. I think Graham's going to be promising in the near future when those girls get to high school."

At most, he hopes to start a pipeline of players to Bluefield College for many years to come.

"We're really wanting to make it a recruiting tool and be able to bring in kids and work with that individually," Hardin said. "And we've got a couple of recruits coming in next week for our high potential camp. We're hoping that ends up turning into a good thing for us and other local colleges can come over and watch and we can turn it into a good recruiting tool."

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