Fifty Bermuda students have been mentored by Jason Fisher, a top high school basketball coach from Pennsylvania.

A collaboration between the Bermuda Basketball Association, Bermuda College, Leave It Better Foundation and The Fidelis Partnership resulted in the “Play It Forward” Camp.

Fisher, the head varsity basketball coach at Devon Prep, is one of the Leave It Better directors. As a pilot project, he brought some of his former students to coach and provide life lessons to youngsters on island.

“The idea started as a way for us to help other people in sports,” Fisher told The Royal Gazette.

“It evolved through Fidelis and some contacts that we made that were basketball players. We thought it was better if we were focusing on basketball.

“Joshua Nesbitt [BBA vice-president] has been great. He got us situated here at the college, reached out to all the people in his organisation and we’re lucky enough to have 50 children come into the camp.

“I coach high school basketball in Pennsylvania and one of the things that we do is try and make the children understand how lucky they are to be able to play basketball.

“We want them to go and explain to other children that they’re lucky to have basketball too, but some of them aren’t as fortunate as we are to be able to play at a great school up in Pennsylvania.

“I got this idea after I read a book a long time ago called All Blacks, about the New Zealand rugby team. One of the things that their coaches challenge their players to do is when they take the jersey off for the final time that they left it in a better spot.

“I took that message and I applied it to the basketball guys that I coached and then now we’re trying to do the same thing. We’re trying to leave everybody we come in contact with in a better spot.”

Fisher, who has been coaching for almost 25 years, is looking forward to the camp attendees growing in all aspects of life.

“I hope that the players that we come into contact with learn basketball,” he said.

“I hope that they can realise that basketball is a way to teach life lessons and that will transcend basketball because eventually the ball will stop bouncing and these guys will have to do other things.

“I hope that for the players that aspire to play college or come over to the States, that they’ve developed contacts with our guys where they can reach out and they can help.”

Chris Patton, who plays for professional minor league basketball side Reading Rebels, enjoyed working with the island’s budding stars.

“The sessions have been great,” the 23-year-old said.

“Even just the two or three days we’ve been here, I think we’ve seen everybody get a whole lot better, better than what they were before.

“Hopefully, everyone’s learned something new. I feel like the skills we’re implementing, a lot of fundamental stuff, that’ll help them going forward.”

Nesbitt indicated that they were pushing to have the camp on an annual basis.

“I’ve been here throughout and Jason and the counsellors have been great,” he said.

“This is something that we plan on doing every year and we are hoping that they want to come back next year. That’s where we’re headed, so we’re hoping that every year that this will be around the same time as a camp and hopefully extend it to maybe one or two weeks.

“We’ve got children from everywhere, from the age of 8 to 18. It’s a development initiative, but also an initiative for our players to see what it’s like to play and be coached by someone that is coaching at a higher level, which we don't normally have in Bermuda.

“We’ve had camps in the past, but this is the first time we’ve actually flown people in specifically for this with the mind goal of not just basketball.

“This is a camp for not just basketball, but for leadership, artificial intelligence and technology. So this is an opportunity for our children to get a little taste of everything, but with the main case being basketball.

“The sponsor is Fidelis and we appreciate everything that they’ve done. Bermuda College, we appreciate them for allowing us to use their gymnasium as well as Horseshoe Bay Live for helping out and SEI, which is a foreign company.”

MariBeth Doyle, the camp co-ordinator, was impressed by the level of engagement from the Bermuda students.

“When we connected with the Bermuda Basketball Association, Josh suggested putting together a summer camp that involved skill development, leadership and character development as well,” Doyle said.

“We’re also doing some community service where we’ll be partnering with Keep Bermuda Beautiful for a clean-up at Elbow Beach.

“It’s been primarily basketball sessions for a few hours. Throughout the week, we’ve done different educational sessions for them and we also had a question and answer session.

“Most of our counsellors have played basketball in college, so they’ve been through that process. We gave the campers opportunities to ask any kind of questions of the counsellors and it was great they asked them.

“There’s definitely a lot of great questions asked by the campers and I think our counsellors gave some really good answers. That was a really good exchange and one of the other things that we’d really like to do is make connections.”