NATCHEZ —Friday marked the end of yet another successful Miss-Lou basketball camp, hosted by Samuel West. Even as the camp wound to an end, the kids were still grinning ear to ear and laughing.

“This camp was real nice,” 9-year-old Jalen Russ said. “We did a lot of fun stuff. I just love being at the camp with all my friends and I just love that Coach West taught us all these fundamentals.

“He taught us how to dribble, he taught us how to shoot with form, and he taught us how to go between our legs and different things like that.”

Fellow camper, Woodrow Proby, echoed Russ’ sentiments.

“I just love basketball camps. The best part was when I dribbled through the cones.”

Although West was directing kids and demonstrating fundamentals he seemed like he was having just as much fun as the kids.

“It’s always successful,” West said. “Whether there’s three or four children, or 110, it doesn’t matter. We come and do it the best we can do.”

Despite being removed as Alcorn State’s head men’s basketball coach last month, West made it clear that the end of his long-running camp was not in the foreseeable future.

“I don’t know how much longer I can do it like this, but I’m going to keep doing it as long as I can because this is my home and I want to do it.

“Anything I can do to try and get Natchez back to the way that it was, I want to try and do that.”

Russ, for one, said he’s definitely coming back next year. As the camp wound down for the summer parents and family members watched from the bleachers, camcorders in hand, as their campers went through the final rounds of drills.

Some campers performed the task flawlessly. Others fumbled through the drills. Although the talent was as varied as the ages (age 5 to 14), two things are for sure; the kids learned discipline under West and perhaps the most important, everyone had fun.

“I hope they learned at least a little bit because we gave them everything we had,” West said to the parents at the end of the camp.