Hoop In: Marauders Basketball Clinic Starts Up Season, Community

The tradition at many college basketball programs is to hold a special kickoff ceremony on the first day of the season, including "Midnight Madness" in which players begin the season at 12:01 a.m. to wild cheering and spectacular feats of passing and dunking. 

In Belmont, the hoop season begins with more than 150 kids – barely taller than half the height of the basket – dribbling, passing, running into each other on the main court of Belmont High School's Wenner Field House.

Free throwers contest floor space with bounce-passes while the littler kids have their own space in the upper gym.

What is becoming a tradition in town, Belmont held its annual Marauder Basketball Youth Clinic five week-long skills clinic where current players and alumni from Belmont's basketball programs along with guests speakers instruct children from third to eighth grade on the finer points of the game.

Adam Pritchard and Melissa Hart, head coaches of the Belmont High School boys and girls basketball teams, have led the clinic from the first day, one which they immediately discovered back in 2009 that the interest in this every-Wednesday program outstripped the expected demand.

"It started as a fund raiser so we could pay for buses for scrimmages," said Pritchard. "We then were hoping to get 40 kids in the upstairs gym and 150 turned up. When that happened, we said 'We need a new plan.'" 

Pritchard said he then "reached out to volunteers, community members to help out and it's turned into a really great thing."

Saying that the clinic is "a chance for our players to do community service and a chance for us to work with young kids," Pritchard and Hart also sprinkled in special guests during the week including Babson College's Head Coach Stephen Brennan, former standout Marauders' like Mike Crody and Kathy King along with current players and assistant coaches. 

On the final day, Maura Healey came to talk to the campers. A long-time friend and member of Hart's adult women's basketball league, the former Harvard captain, All-American and professional player discussed not just how dribbling techniques but life lessons. 

"Adversity is when you run into a wall, when you fail. It's when you lose when you worked so hard. But you learn more losing then you do winning because you can remember your mistakes and change those to be better," said Healy, who announced earlier in the year her campaign to become Massachusetts Attorney General. 

For Pritchard and Hart, the clinic is not about finding the next high school phenom – although that would be nice, said Pritchard – but about the joys of hoops.

"We just want to teach basketball, we want to have a community event that leads up to our season," said Pritchard, noting the clinic holds a food drive each year and other service events.

"It's not about the score or separation of teams. It's about bringing everyone together. It's just a net positive for Belmont," he said.

And it's just a lot of fun; we all look forward for it now.