DeKalb County is hosting a team basketball camp this week with several talented high school teams participating.  While the camp is great training for all the teams in attendance, it’s an especially good deal for DeKalb County players. 
"I think we’ve got about 17 boys’ teams coming, and about 10 girls’ teams," Coach Lynus Martin told the Smithville Review.  "It’s a great a great week of basketball." 
Coach Martin, the head coach for the Tigers’ boys’ basketball team, said that the camp being hosted here in Smithville is a great benefit to local players, in more ways than one. "It’s good that we don’t have to make our (DeKalb) kids pay for camp. They get to enjoy playing in their own gym, it’s a lot closer, and it makes things a lot easier."
According to Martin, the competition seen at the camp is also an advantage to our local teams. "We get to play some great teams.  We’ve got a slew of teams that have been to the state tournament this past year coming to a small camp like ours … that says a lot.  We’ve got White County here, Cumberland County, Jackson, York, Siegel, Macon, Watertown, Clarkrange … there’s three or four teams that has made the state tournament.
"Our goal is for the kids to get better and improve individually," Martin continued. "We want to play good teams and see where our weaknesses are and what we need to work on.  We can get some kids on the floor and see who plays good together and what kind of bench we’ve got.  We’ll have a better overall feel of where we’re headed and what we need to work on."
When asked how the Tigers’ team is looking for the coming season, Coach Martin said youth is a big factor and that playing experience is needed.  "We’ve been to one camp and played three games against Portland, Gallatin, and Lebanon, that’s three AAA teams and that’s what we want. We want to play some good teams. We’re not necessarily looking at the overall wins and losses for this year’s team, because it’s so new, there’s so many younger kids. We’re just seeing how we compete and how physical we are. We have to see how we’re able to handle the basketball in different situations. That’s why we want to play good teams, to see how much better we need to get."
The team basketball camp is being held at the DCHS gym, DeKalb Middle School gym, and at Northside Elementary.  The camp concludes on Thursday.