This summer, I again survived an Oliver Purnell Basketball Camp. For the fourth consecutive year I attended the Father/Son Basketball Camp on Father’s day weekend put on by Purnell, his coaches, and his players. For the fourth consecutive year I came back hurting in more places than I have places. After writing more than my share of articles recently, I felt that this would be a good time to let my eight year old, Jason, have his hand at writing an article once again. He kept a diary of what went on during our stay and shares it below.

This has got to be just about the coolest thing in the world, next to going to Disney World. I love going to Disney World. I’ve gotten to gothere a few times on vacation. I don’t know if my dad likes it or not. He always complains about how much everything costs and never lets me get any souvenirs. Then on top of all that, he messed up his back last year on one of the roller coasters and had to go to a bunch of doctors and take a lot of pills for a long time. He said he doesn’t want to go back for a while.

Luckily, he still wanted to go to the UD basketball camp. It is kind of my brother and my present to my dad for Father’s Day. He gets to play basketball a lot and sleep in the dorm for one night. We also get to eat as much as we want. Last year I think my dad ate too much, because during the Basketball Olympics, he had to go outside and throw-up.

My dad has been really working on his game for the last two days but he still seems to be missing a lot of shots and breathing real hard after just shooting for a few minutes. Hopefully my brother and I can do OK so we don’t score as bad as we did last year.

We had to get up early this morning to drive to Dayton and my brother was really unhappy about having to get up so early on a Saturday. My dad promised that we would get to go to Burger King for breakfast so I got ready in a hurry and got to listen to my mom and dad yelling at my brother. I wonder if they really would make him go in his underwear if he didn’t get ready on time. I had some extra time, so I helped my dad get all of our stuff in the car including the big fan that we use in the dorm.

Even though my dad got pretty mad at me for spilling the BK Orange Juice in his new car, he must have forgotten about it by the time we got to the dorm. As he carried in all of our clothes, towels and fan all I heard him do was say that he would give a million bucks for a little air conditioning. As my dad says, there is nothing like a mid June stay in a dorm with no air conditioning.

We finally got to the old field house and started shooting around. My brother and I were playing knock-out when I noticed that my dad was holding his finger and saying some words that I heard once in an R rated movie. It was pretty neat how purple it got right away. I guess that he should have taken his ring off before we started, because he sure can’t now.

It wasn’t long before Coach Purnell started talking about how lucky we were to be there and that our dads were really cool to give up their time to bring us. I guess the rest of the kids aren’t doing it just for their dads like Justin and me. I know dad loves it, because he talks for weeks before it, wondering what part of his body he will muck up this time. I’m not sure what that means, but it must be good.

Before long, we start going through exercises to get warmed up. It didn’t take my dad long to get warmed up as his whole shirt was wet in just a few minutes. He seems to have a lot more trouble getting up and down than the rest of us kids. It must be because of all of the water he keeps drinking.

We do drill after drill and my dad just seems to get slower and slower. He keeps complaining that he has to do everything twice because there are two of us and most dads only brought one son. I wish I got to do everything twice, I don’t know what his problem is. After about 6 hours of practice, we got to go swimming. For some reason, my dad just sat there while my brother and I had races.

On the way back to the back to the dorm, my brother and I had another race while my dad kept complaining about how bad his feet hurt. We went back to our room to get ready for the all-you-can-eat pizza dinner and my dad decided to change his socks. I guess he should have worn shoes that fit him better, because there was a lot of blood on one of his socks and I think he said something about a toenail coming off.

Yuck!

I ate a bunch of pizza and was ready for the Basketball Olympics that night. After getting to play basketball for about eight hours, you get to show how good you are under eight timed events. Last year, my dad threw up, so he didn’t eat much pizza this year. It’s pretty much fun as you get to do a bunch of different things, most of which include running. In between each one of them, my dad just lies on the floor, says that his back hurts and keeps talking about how many events are left. My dad must have had a good time, because when we were done, he seemed to be real happy.

My brother and I ate a ton of ice cream later that night. My dad just wanted to sleep, but for some reason we were not sleepy. Besides, it is fun to kick the person on the top of a bunk bed when you are on the bottom. My dad seemed to get pretty mad after a while, so we thought that we better stop or my dad wouldn’t be in a very good mood the next day when we get to play the dads in a big game.

Sunday morning came awfully fast as the coaches started pounding on doors and blowing a whistle at 7 o’clock. My dad wasn’t very happy, because he didn’t seem to get a lot of sleep, even with all of the pills that he took before he went to bed. I slept pretty good and couldn’t wait to get ready for the big game against dad and the other dads.

After getting up and dressed we walked over to the cafeteria. I wasn’t very happy with my dad when he wouldn’t let me get bacon, potatoes, scrambled eggs and an omelet. The lady behind the counter wasn’t very happy either when dad grabbed me by the shirt and said that we wouldn’t need the omelet. Anyway, after we got done eating, we went to the field house. Most of the dads were moving pretty slow, so I knew that we could beat them.

It was unbelievable the way that we kids played. The dads kept making bad throws and I made a basket from behind the foul line. They got close just before halftime, but they got a lot worse in the second half and we won 23 to 14.

My dad was all sweaty, but said that he just wanted to go home as he limped back to our car. I sure hope he enjoyed his Father’s Day present.

Jason Churan is a huge fan of the Flyers and has the autographs to prove it. Once each year he volunteers to take up a little bit of the workload from his dad and write one of the stories.