There is plenty of interest in the ongoing OSU football camp, and with good reason. The OSU camp attracts over 2000 campers in its three sessions, and has proven to be a valuable tool for both recruiters and prospects alike. The O-Zone documented last week the value if the camps to both coaches and players as a recruiting tool and a place to showcase talent.

Campers young and old, large and small, register for OSU football camp.

While the football camp is a very important one, it is not the only camp that takes place at OSU. Camps are being conducted in a variety of sports, including baseball and hockey, and the basketball program under Jim O'Brien plans to aggressively stage camps as well.

These other sports programs do stage camps like the football program, but in most cases the camps do not serve as a place to showcase talent. In the hockey program, for instance, the emphasis is on teaching and creating interest in OSU hockey on the local level.

"We want to to build up an Ohio State hockey presence here in town," said OSU head hockey coach John Markell. "Obviously, it also generates revenue for assistant coaches and coaches to supplement their income, but it's also worthwhile because we think we have something to give to the kids here in town. Whatever knowledge we do have we can help them with, and we can also make hopefully in the future young kids who are interested in Ohio State, maybe when the get a little older, might remember us and come back. When we get into the Shottenstein Center, if we can use that building, they'll be practicing in that building and maybe their dream will be to play there," said Markell.

Markell sees his hockey school as a place to perhaps influence local kids, but does not foresee it as the type of recruiting tool that the football camp has become.

"No, what we see it as is a place where maybe a ten year old or eleven year old will get 'stuck on' Ohio State. That's what we want. For a 16 or 17 year old player who is a pretty good hockey player, would he come to hockey school and pay his way? No. He won't do that. It's not like football where they come in for evaluation. At that age, because of the junior leagues and so on in hockey, everyone knows who the good players are already," said Markell.

The Ohio State baseball camp was also in full swing this week (yes, that was an intentional pun) with several hundred campers on hand to take instruction and try to improve their game. Campers were in from as far away as Canada, and all seemed to be having a good time. The baseball camp, like the hockey camp, tends not to be the recruiting tool that the football camp is. According to OSU pitching coach Pat Bangtson, there is very good reason for that.

"Baseball is different from football in that we have summer leagues and kids can play year round, so you don't find the better kids in the camps, you find them in the summer leagues. For that reason the baseball

Baseball Camper John Underman from Westerville Ohio prepares to take some cuts.

camp is not the same kind of recruiting tool as the football camp. It is more instructional and gives players a place to go that want to improve their games, or local kids who just want to come over to OSU, use our facilities and have some fun. We do try to accommodate some of the better players that play in summer leagues by conducting our camp in two sessions (morning and afternoon) so some of the kids playing in summer leagues can get to camp and still get to their ball game in the summer leagues as well," said Bangston.

The Ohio State basketball program is also in the camp business, and according to associate head coach Rick Boyages, the Ohio State basketball camp program is on the grow.

"Camp wise, we have three camps. At the end of this month, we have team camp, which our staff has never run before. It's about a dozen high school teams roughly, and they just basically play games. We've got an officials camp, a referee's camp, that runs in coordination with the team camp. We have teams like Akron Buchtel, Dublin Scioto, Massilon Jackson, Brookhaven, about a dozen high school teams. The first two days, Sunday and Monday the 28th and 29th, we just play games, five or six games a day. Then on Tuesday we have a double elimination tournament," said Boyages in explaining the format.

Boyages went on to explain that the team camp is a real boon to the high school programs that are invited.

"The high school coaches in Ohio can only coach their teams 10 days in the summer. This way they can play 12 to 15 games in 3 days, so they utilize their coaching days to the max and they like it," said Boyages.

The OSU basketball camps do not end with the team camps.

"We've got two camps after July 4th. A day camp for boys 8 to 16, and that is July 6 to 10, which runs 9:00 AM until 3:30 PM, so there is a morning and afternoon session, and we provide lunch. And then we have an overnight camp July 12 to 16, Sunday until Thursday, and that's probably a little bit more competitive than the day camp. There are three sessions including an evening session every day. We provide meals every day, they play games, they get instruction. We like to keep the ratio of coaches to campers at 8:1 or better. Last year it was better, and this year it will probably be better than that too," said Boyages.

According to Boyages, university sponsored basketball camps do not serve as the recruiting tool that football camps do, for a similar reason that we see in baseball.

"The reason why (the camps are not strong recruiting tools) is the AAU circuit in basketball. July is a main recruiting month, and throughout July are all AAU tournaments, so anyone who runs a basketball camp, an instructional camp, in July, typically will not get the upper echelon Division I type athletes. The other thing is that there are a lot of invitational camps and a lot of showcase camps that are privately run like the five star invitational, eastern invitational, and so on. So that leaves us with more of a local camp or state wide camp where you don't get the national recruits. That's really where we are at with the camps. Our day camp draws from a radius of 30 or 40 miles," said Boyages.

Boyages went on to say the the OSU team camp could turn into a bit of recruiting tool, but within limits.

"The camp for us that could resemble something like football eventually is the team camp, because we are doing it in June before the recruiting period in July. We are bringing high school players with their entire team onto campus, so we have the potential of having some top players on campus, but the top players, the heavily recruited players, are with AAU teams and traveling All Star teams, and a lot of them don't see their high school coaches until October. So the setup for basketball is very, very different from football," said Boyages.

Do you know a kid that has a little time to kill this summer? He or she might want to spend some of it at an OSU sports camp. They will probably improve their game, have some fun, make some friends, and might just even get discovered.

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