VALDOSTA — Though their team is in the offseason, the Valdosta State Lady Blazers were busy last week, hosting three different basketball camps in a span of seven days.

From June 7-10, they held a day basketball camp for younger children, which saw 40 kids show up.

Around the same time, they opened a team camp where nearly 30 high school basketball teams brushed up on their skills. That went through June 12. The Lady Blazers Elite Camp ended June 13, where players from different schools worked out individually. This drew in-state athletes, as well as some from Florida and Alabama.

Lady Blazers’ assistant coach Janelle Silver served as the program coordinator while having some VSU players help with coaching the high schoolers.

With it being her first year as the planner, Silver felt that she had the opportunity to revamp and build the camps from scratch while using the PE Complex along with the Student Recreation Center for the camp site.

“It took a while to prep for this camp,” a relieved Silver said. “I did everything from beginning to end. I had to get an LLC to prep this camp. I was surprised by how many people signed up once the word got out. We had a day camp for the first four days for little kids. We had about 40 campers. Then we had team camp, which were teams using our facility to play games. Twenty-nine teams signed up for that. Which is crazy. Then for our Elite Camp, we maxed out at 80 campers and had to turn some people away. It was a very good turnout for all of our camps.”

As an incentive to compete the hardest, awards were given out once the camp concluded.

Honors went to: Most Valuable Player to Shamya Flanders (Brunswick High); Most Improved Player to Kaeley Ciceron (Sebastian River High, Fla.), and Lady Blazer of the Day to Amber Mateo, from Somerset Academy at Silver Palms in Miami.

“For day camp, we gave out a lot of awards because their kids and we wanted to keep everyone involved,” Silver said. “For Elite Camp, to get an award amongst 80 kids is a big deal. We had a lot of people stand out. Amber Mateo received the Lady Blazer of the Day Award because she was someone that I saw personally giving high-fives to her teammates, lifting, and coaching them up and being a good student-athlete. Honestly, I did not get to see the MVP play much because I was trying to run the camp behind the scenes as well, but I hear she was getting it done on both ends. When I did get to watch her, she was really big on communicating to her teammates as they were playing in the games.”

Silver’s biggest goal for next year’s camp after her first go – expansion.

She wants to bring in even more student-athletes by raising the attendance cap and having multiple locations.

“I want to expand because this was my first time running camps and I had to turn people away,” Silver said. “In Valdosta, there’s not many entities that’s doing things like this. I want to maybe use not only our rec facility but local high schools and area gyms so we can accept more campers. Honestly overall, I have been getting a lot of good feedback from people involved. They have all had a good experience.”