This weekend, thousands of basketball players of all sizes and abilities are competing in Hoopfest. Some prepared for the tournament by participating in a basketball camp that targeted a particular demographic.
The Many Medicines camp replaced an annual Washington State University Spokane summer staple.
WSU's two-week Na-ha-shnee camp for Native American students teaches kids what it’s like to work as a doctor, nurse or other health professional, especially in a Native community.
But attendance has been spotty, so Jerry Crowshoe and his team thought there must a better way to get more kids interested. Crowshoe is the director of WSU’s Native American Health Sciences program. The answer was basketball.
"Since basketball is pretty popular in Spokane with Hoopfest and Gonzaga, all the different AAU teams and stuff, State B. We're using basketball, the trend, especially how popular it is in Indian country, to provide a camp free for families, because we know how camps can be expensive, where we combine health science teachings and basketball. So that way, they get a little exposure of both," Crowshoe said.
"But also, the health sciences contribute to the basketball itself. Doctors teach about anatomy and muscle building. Nursing teaches about injury prevention, speech and hearing about brain trauma. Pharmacy about good uses and bad uses of Tylenol, correct ways and proper ways to do those, vitamins and stuff. So every college is contributing to the intellectual component of basketball, educating their minds."
The academics comprised the morning part of the camp. After lunch, the students were bussed to Shaw Middle School for the basketball portion of the day. WSU hired coaches and former players to teach dribbling and shooting. The coaches included
Jude Schimmel, a Umatilla tribal member from Oregon, who played at the University of Louisville and professionally in Spain.
Crowshoe admits WSU timed the camp to coincide with Hoopfest and said many of the students would be playing in the tournament.
"I said, how many of you guys are playing Hoopfest? And the majority of them all raised their hands. That was kind of the pitch when we started," he said.
"We wanted to capitalize on the big Hoopfest week. Because even my kid, who plays basketball, he is done with basketball after Hoopfest. He doesn't really start up till fall. So we thought, well, we better do it in June before then. But we also kind of thought it was good to do our part to kind of contribute to that basketball aura that Spokane has and do our part."
Crowshoe said camp officials accepted more than 90 students for the camp and had to turn a bunch away. That's a lot more than the 20 or so that the Na-ha-shnee camp typically drew.
Crowshoe says WSU is morphing Na-ha-shnee from a single summer camp into a full program that includes separate events for students of different ages.
"We work with the Tribal Advisory Board that's made up of tribal elders, tribal leaders. We work with tribes all around our area and one of the things that they've always been consistent in asking is, working younger and younger with their students. They say, you're matriculating way too late. We say how early should we start working with them? They say, kindergarten, and be consistent," he said.
With the success of the Many Medicines basketball camp fresh on their minds, Crowshoe and his team are considering other camps with sporting themes.
"Volleyball camps in Yakima. You know, we'd love to do these camps in Nez Perce, we'd love to do these camps in Umatilla. And rather than try to bring kids in, we want to take this camp and these messages out to communities," he said.
Crowshoe says those would supplement other new developments in WSU’s program, including the opening of a new Indigenous simulation center this fall.
