Lobos bring their summer camp to Pueblo Pavilion
The Lobos are coming back to Santa Fe, and this time they’re trying something new along their way.
The University of New Mexico’s men’s basketball team will be in the capital city for a second straight year with a summer kids’ camp this weekend at the Santa Fe Indian School’s spacious Pueblo Pavilion.
Head coach Paul Weir brings with him a team that will get up close and personal with fans from the north and, like last year, it’ll be an extended sales pitch to get people back on board with a program that made noticeable gains in Weir’s first season in Albuquerque.
Last week, he spoke about what a difference a year makes for his team. When the Lobos visited Perez-Shelley Gymnasium last August, the roster was a work in progress as last-minute additions were still falling into place just weeks before the start of the fall semester.
This time it’s different. Every schol-
arship is filled and all but one player is currently on campus participating in summer workouts.
Weir said this is the time where players have to back up the talk of being a Lobo.
“Everybody says they want to do it,” Weir said. “Everybody says they want to play fast, everyone says they want to train hard, everybody says they want to be part of a team, everybody says they want to do all those things. It’s when they get here and they actually start going through it that the friction begins.”
Buying into his system means buying into a mindset that an unshakable work ethic is behind everything a player does. Weir sells that to every child who signs up for his summer camps, and it’s something he preaches to his players the second they walk through his door.
“Not everybody may make it, you know?” Weir said. “They may walk in and ring the bell and say, ‘coach, you know what, this isn’t for me.’ God bless them.”
Unlike those first few months of the Weir era, the team is already well acclimated to the rigors of his training style. He has gone to interesting lengths to get the team as fit as possible, going so far as to ask for a sand pit for training purposes installed near the softball facility.
He even has his players playing tennis in their spare time.
“We’re constantly looking for different ways to exercise or different ways to train the body,” he said. “Not only to make them a better athlete, but I think to kind of freshen their minds and things like that.”
It doesn’t hurt that the Lobos’ new and vastly overhauled roster is brimming with the kind of talent not seen on the south campus for at least five years. Among the incoming players are transfers who spent time at power schools like Ohio State, UConn, Kansas and Pittsburgh.
“We do have a lot of depth and so it’s a good thing we’re all so versatile,” said junior Vance Jackson, a 6-foot-8 power forward who’s one of four incoming fresh faces to clog the low post for a team that woefully undermanned in that department last season. “We can all play more than one position.”
As much of a challenge as it has been getting acclimated, the summer months do offer the fun breaks that this weekend’s camp provides. Weir said it’s just another chance for his players to see the state and get to know some of the fans who rarely get an opportunity to meet the Lobos in person.
LOBO CAMP
Weir said there are still plenty of spots available for this weekend’s kids camp at SFIS. It runs two days, Saturday and Sunday, at a cost of $135 per camper.
Last year’s Santa Fe camp at St. Michael’s drew about 100 kids. As of Monday, about half that were preregistered for this weekend.
Weir turned to Santa Fe broadcasting company, Sports Primo, to help promote the camp through social media. Owned and operate by brothers Joe and Aaron Abeyta, Sports Primo reached about half a million viewers the last school year alone.
The Abeytas sat down with Weir on Monday night in The Pit to film an interview that is expected to be posted by Tuesday morning on www.sportsprimo.com and on the company’s Facebook page.
Most of the players on the Lobos’ active roster will be at the camp, including nearly all of the familiar names who’ve been a part of the program for a while but never actually suited up for a game; players like Jackson and JaQuan Lyle.
Kids in grades 1-8 are eligible. Instruction will be done by the Lobo coaches and players, with guest speakers interspersed among the in-camp tournaments and contests. Players will be divided by ability and age.
For more information, log onto www.golobos. com or call the Lobo basketball office at 505-925-5750.