Reviews
Quickhandle
My son attended this camp in 2003, after a recommendation from a friend. I regretfully passed that recommendation along to several other people. Apparently, a lot of people passed the word and attendance ballooned.
The ratio of campers to counselors was impractical. They couldn’t contain the number of campers in the gym, so portable hoops were put out on the black top. Due to the limited number of counselors the first couple of days, the older players were getting fouled hard and pushed into walls during games. With the ability to drop-by during the day, I was able to witness this first hand. My son and the younger players were playing outside on the asphalt with the lopsided portable hoops.
I happened to drop by on another day when Coach Mendo was giving one of his inspirational talks to the campers. A lot of the talk was about himself, which I can understand since he had played professionally in Europe. However, I know college and retired NBA players that don’t talk as highly about themselves. He went on to explain and demonstrate what you should do if you get an elbow from a player -- you got to give it right back. I can understand some of this for the older players, but at the time my son was going into the sixth grade and there were players younger than that listening to this coaching.
On the last day of camp, parents were invited to see the mass choreographed dribbling and verbal command demonstration, which lasted about five minutes. After the camp was over, I gave Coach Mendo a call and told him I was disappointed, mostly due to the number of campers and insufficient number of counselors. I would have appreciated an apology, but he defended everything about his camp and did not want to hear any of my feedback.
Quickhandle now has an academy that has a set of core values they want the kids to reach. According to the Quickhandle website, one of the core values is to develop core moral values. I’m all for that!
Please make sure you do your homework on this camp before spending your $$. Find out the camper to counselor ratio and drop by to see how the camp is being "handled" by those in charge [I cannot recommend the camp based on our experience].
Get more info at the Quickhandle website.