NEWS RELEASE

Lincoln Memorial University men’s basketball hosted an ELITE camp on Sunday, hosting multiple high schools from various locations in Tennessee, Virginia, Florida, Kentucky, Georgia, and other states from the southeast. Attendees participated in drills and exercises to help prepare them for collegiate level basketball.

Head coach Jeremiah Samarrippas was pleased with the amount of campers who turned out for the camp over the weekend. “The turnout has been pretty good,” he said. “We have well over 50 campers here today; it’s been a great turnout. We’ve got kids from Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, and pretty much everywhere in attendance. I think because of our location we are presented with a unique opportunity in which we’re able to reach a lot of different states. I am really really thrilled with the turnout.”

Samarrippas spoke on the importance of variety in camp attendees, and how vital the diversity of talent is to the recruiting process. “I think the broad spectrum of campers and variety of talent are very important to our recruiting process,” he said. “Like I said, I think we’re in a very unique position geographically that allows us to reach a lot of states, so we’re able to recruit not only the southeast, but the Midwest a little bit as well. We’re very fortunate compared to other schools in the South Atlantic Conference that can’t necessarily touch as many places as we can.”

Samarrippas believes that Lincoln Memorial University’s history of success is a driving force in keeping interest in the camp high. “I think our tradition of success and our resume are really appealing to these young men.,” he said. “They can go and search around our athletics’ website and see the type of success we’ve had as a program. And also looking at our roster, we’ve got guys that are here from all over, which is unique. I think that is also appealing to these guys. You look at all the teams we have here and where they’re from, and we’ve got guys from all over these places. The campers are able to look over the roster and get a familiar feeling by seeing some of our players are from where they’re from. So, I feel like our roster composition and our history of success are driving factors as to why these guys want to come out to our camps.”

Samarrippas also highlighted that the camp’s main goal was not only to elevate the play of camp attendees, but to also get a first-hand evaluation of the talent at the camp. “Our main goal of ELITE camp for us is to give our campers an idea of what it’s like at Lincoln Memorial University,” said Samarrippas. “We want to show them our top-notch facilities, give them an idea of what it would be like to be on the court,  and a chance to work around some of our players. Being able to play live in front of our entire coaching staff, to me, that’s probably the most important thing; getting a hands-on in-person evaluation of the talent that we have here at the ELITE camp.”