BELLMEAD, Texas (KXXV) — The sounds of sneaker squeaks fill the La Vega gym in the third annual "Train Like a Champ" camp.
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For head coach Marcus Willis Sr. — the mind behind the camp, he tells me that this is about more than basketball.
"Any time you get a chance to impact lives it's a truly a blessing and as you can see behind me we're definitely doing a good job of impacting life and that's what we do it for. We don't wanna impact lives in a basketball manner, we wanna impact lives in a life manner," he said.
"Knowing that we were once these little kids, searching for the same opportunities, hoping to be as good as we can," returning La Vega pirate KP Parr said.
Former players like KP and Mimi Willis return to help the camp to teach the next generation of Pirates. They tell me how much they miss playing for La Vega.
"Oh, a lot more than anything," Parr said.
"We miss playing together with my dad," Mimi said.
It's also a family reunion as Mimi helps her dad out with camp.
"It's cool to see him just continue to grow every year and like just the love he has for the game and the kids to like allow them to get better to like coach them and everything so it's nice to see," she said.
I've seen the evolution of this camp and one thing that coach Willis always tells me — is the importance of Bellmead.
"To be able to get back to the community that also pours back into us, into our program, once again it just shows it takes a village, but it also shows how collectively together that we are in the city of Bellmead and once again this campus that's just not for La Vega, it's for any kid, any district," Willis Sr. said.
