IT’S different from the other basketball training camps that have mushroomed throughout the country.
This cage camp not only teaches participants on how to improve their basketball skills but also to help enhance character-building in that it inculcates in them the value of sportsmanship, discipline and accountability.
The Coach D Elite Basketball Camp is the camp that has attracted the attention of budding basketball athletes who hope to learn a trick or two from the masters of the game like coach Domeng Unson, or simply Coach D to his students and friends.
Coach D once worked with the coaching staff of former professional player Loreto “Ato” Tolentino at the multi-titled University of Manila and Rizal Technological University. He also had helped former University of the East Warriors bench boss Lawrence Chongson with the Tanduay entry in the Philippine Basketball Association Development League.
Others who have helped Unson in his camp include Joselito “Lito” Vergara.
Interestingly, the Coach D Elite Basketball Camp had an austere beginning. Established in 2008, the camp’s first-ever session was held at the rooftop of a ragtag building in Escolta, Manila with only four kids in attendance.
Since then, it has grown so much to include as many as 100 participants at a given time.
The relentless effort to instruct the young student athletes the art of basketball-playing and stress the importance of character formation in their development as a person has paid dividends in recent years.
Among the products of the Coach D Elite Basketball Camp are Renzel Yongco, Kenric Kok and even brothers Jeric and Jeron Teng back in their intermediary and secondary years at Xavier School.
During their high school senior campaigns, Yongco, from Saint Jude Catholic School, and Kok, from Uno High School, finished first and second in scoring during the 2015 Philippine Ching Yuen Athletic Association basketball competitions. Renzel is now part of the De La Salle University training pool.
Jeric, who later matriculated at the University of Santo Tomas for his tertiary studies, is now in his third season in the professional PBA. His younger brother Jeron is headed for his fifth and final year with the DLSU Green Archers in the 2016 University Athletic Association of the Philippines (UAAP), having powered the Green to the league championship in 2013 in a classic finals that featured the two siblings.
Renzel and Yongco recently showed at the camp to size up an eight-year-old kid from Xavier School named Andrew Bryan Choa who, at his tender age, already stands five feet tall.
Today, the Coach D Elite Basketball Camp holds regular training sessions at the San Juan City-based Xavier School on Fridays and Saturdays, and at the Lorenzo Ruiz gym in Binondo, Manila.
The Coach D Elite Basketball Camp has a Facebook account of the same name with more than 37,000 followers.
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