Blue holds a different kind of camp

There were no entourages. No television cameras. No sneaker reps. None of what goes on during the second weekend of July when the three major sneaker companies - Nike, Adidas and Reebok - hold their respective camps for the top high school players. The debut of the Real Scout All-American 2006, two-day basketball camp, an NCAA-sanctioned event, at St. Sebastian's Grammar School in Woodside didn't include any of the top 10 talent as the other camps do.
Because the closest showcase, the Reebok ABCD Camp, no longer invites prep school players and had cut their list down from 200 to 120, Nate Blue, the Real Scout president and a local A.A.U. Coach with the New York Panthers, felt there was a need for such an event.
It offered a chance for the overlooked yet talented prep and high school players a chance to get noticed. 80 kids from New York, New Jersey and Connecticut - including Sean Crawford of Cardozo and Vernon Teel, the former Flushing star - took part in the inaugural event, which includes four games and a pair of All-Star games for just an enrollment fee of $50. The bigger unaffiliated showcase, Eastern Invitation Camp, in Ewing, New Jersey, run by The Hoop Group, charged $500 per camper.
Coaches from Cincinnati, UConn, St. John's, St. Peter's, Hofstra, Manhattan, Drexel, Rhode Island and Long Island University all stopped by to catch a glimpse of a kid that may have flown under the radar or been overlooked by the sneaker executives.
&#8220Anybody can throw together a camp,” said Scotty Nails, a coach with the Stanford Express A.A.U. basketball club, &#8220but to get coaches here, I give [Nate Blue] a lot of credit.”
Furthermore, on the second day, Blue ran an instructional session for the campers, to illustrate the requirements for college, such as core classes and SAT scores. &#8220We're trying to do something different,” he said. &#8220You can't run an event and have kids running around not knowing what they have to do to qualify.”