Rome High School is offering several sports camps this summer, allowing elementary and middle school-aged students a chance to polish up their skills at several sports while being coached by high school coaches and players.

Soccer is playing host to two camps for boys and girls. The first camp is set for June 9 to 13. The second camp is scheduled for July 7 to 11. Both camps will be held at Rome High School’s upper field from 6 to 8 p.m. each day. The camp is for kids in grades kindergarten through eighth. Registration is $60 and includes a t-shirt. For more information or to register, please email Edison Puccio at [email protected].

The track and field camp will be June 9 and 10 at the Rome High School lower field track from 4 to 6 p.m. both days. The camp is for kids in grades kindergarten through eighth. Registration costs $60 and includes a t-shirt. For more information or to register, please email Kelly Carter at [email protected].

Wrestling camp will be held June 16 and 17 in the wrestling room at the College and Career Academy from 9 a.m. to noon both days. The camp is for kids in grades kindergarten through eighth. Registration is $40 and includes a t-shirt. For more information or to register, please contact Cody Amos at [email protected].

Baseball camp is set for June 16 and 17 at the Rome High School baseball field from 8 a.m. to noon on both days. The camp is for kids in grades kindergarten through eighth. Registration is $50 and includes a t-shirt. For more information or to register, please contact Trevor Proctor at [email protected].

Girls basketball camp is set for June 23 to 26 from 8 a.m. to noon at the Rome High School main gym. The camp is for kids in grades kindergarten through eighth. Registration is $60 and includes a t-shirt. For more information or to register, please contact Jared Hughes at [email protected].

Softball camp is set for June 26 and 27 from 8 a.m. to noon at the Rome High School softball field. Registration is $50 and includes a t-shirt. For more information or to register, please contact Trevor Proctor at [email protected].

Boys basketball camp is set for July 8 to 10 from 8:30 a.m. to noon in the Rome High School main gym. The camp is for kids in grades kindergarten through sixth. Registration is $60 and includes a t-shirt and a basketball. For more information or to register, please contact Dawson Wehunt at [email protected].

Volleyball camp is set for July 8 to 10 from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Rome High School main gym. The camp is for kids in grades third through eighth. Registration is $50 and includes a t-shirt and snack. For more information or to register, please contact Devon Grendow at [email protected].

Cheerleading camp is set for July 14 and 15 in Rome High School’s east gym from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. both days. The camp is for kids in grades pre-kindergarten through fifth. Registration is $45 and includes a t-shirt and a snack, or $60 and includes a t-shirt, snack, and a bow. For more information or to register, please contact Bianca Griffin at [email protected].

STANDISH, Maine – Looking to sharpen your skills, explore a college campus, and enjoy summer on the shores of Sebago Lake? Saint Joseph’s College of Maine is excited to announce a full slate of 2025 Summer Sports Camps designed for athletes of all levels and interests. From youth development clinics to elite prospect experiences, there’s something for everyone.

Check out the full lineup below and register today!

Monks Baseball Prospect Camp

Date: Sunday, August 24th, 2025

Ages: 15 – 19

Time: 9:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Cost: $125

Register: Click here

The Saint Joseph’s College Baseball Instructional Prospect Camps are open to any high school player aged 15-19, who is focused on playing baseball at the next level. The clinics are staffed by Head Coach Will Sanborn, his assistant coaches, alumni and players. Players will experience instruction in a format very similar to a college practice session. The clinics will include instruction in hitting, throwing, fielding, base running, and pitching.

Monks Men’s Soccer Prospect Camp

Date: Sunday, August 2nd, 2025

Ages: 15 – 18, Boys

Time: 8:30 AM – 4:15 PM

Cost: $75

Register: Click here

Monks Soccer Camps will host a Prospect Camp on Sunday, August 2nd, from 8:30 AM to 4:15 PM for prospective high school students at its campus on Sebago Lake in southern Maine. The event offers prospective students a chance to tour the Standish campus, attend information sessions on the application process and financial aid, enjoy lunch and have the opportunity to learn more about one of the more than 40 majors and programs offered.

The camp is staffed by Head Coach Will Pike, his assistant coaches, alumni and players. Players will experience instruction in a format very similar to a college practice session – allowing them to experience a practice structured at a higher level. The camp will include instruction in warm-up, possession, and an inner squad scrimmage.

Saint Joseph’s College of Maine Track & Field Camp

Dates: July 8th – 11th, 2025

Ages: 13 – 18 (rising 9th – 12th graders)

Commuter Cost: $300

Residential Cost: $470

Register: Click here

Join us at one of the nicest Track and Field Facilities in New England where Camp Athletes will learn about Power, Strength, Technique, and Endurance through discussion, demonstration, and practice. The week  will be filled with opportunities to explore and focus on various track and field events – including sprints, distance, hurdles, jumps, and throws – of their choice.

We recommend that each participant choose at least 2 or 3 different events.

Youth Summer Field Hockey Clinic

Dates: Tuesdays – June 17, 24 & July 1, 8, 15, 22

Grades: K – 8

Time: 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM

Cost: $60

Register: Click here

Join the SJC coaching staff, on their home turf, to learn skills, concepts, and have fun playing field hockey. The clinic is open to players of any level.

Saint Joseph’s Women’s Lacrosse Summer Clinic

Date: Friday, July 25th, 2025

Grades: 9 – 12

Time: 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM (Tour: 12:00 PM – 12:45 PM)

Cost: $30

Register: Click here

The Saint Joseph’s College Lacrosse Prospect Camps are open to any high school player, who is focused on playing lacrosse at the next level or looking to improve their skills!  The Clinic will include small sided drills and live scrimmage play. This is also a great opportunity to visit our beautiful college campus and meet the Saint Joseph’s women’s lacrosse coaching staff . An optional campus tour will also be provided following our clinic. You could also choose to jump in the Sebago Lake at our waterfront access on campus to cool off!

This clinic features high-intensity, small-sided drills and live scrimmage play to sharpen your game and showcase your talent.

There will also be a chance to explore our beautiful lakeside campus, connect with our coaching staff, and play lacrosse!  After the clinic, you may take an optional guided campus tour — or cool off with a refreshing dip in Sebago Lake, just steps away from our athletic facilities.

Don’t miss this exciting opportunity to grow your game and discover what makes Saint Joseph’s College a special place to play lacrosse and learn!

Volleyball Elite College Prospect Clinic

Date: Sunday, July 20th, 2025

Grades: 9 – 12, Girls

Time: 10:00 AM – 3:00 PM

Cost: $75

Register: Click here

This Elite Level Prospect Camp is intended for strong players in high school who are focused on playing college volleyball at a competitive level.  This is not a good fit for beginners. 

Spend the day with Head Coach Jon Roberts, Assistant Coaches Tori Huntley & Jamie Jannarone (current SJC volleyball players may be available TBD).  Experience a FUN, supportive, and competitive training environment on the beautiful campus of Saint Joseph’s College, located right on the shore of Sebago Lake.

Players will experience instruction in the same format as a college training session. The camp will include technical drills, small sided games, and fun competitive play. 

Also enjoy lunch, a Question & Answer session, optional campus tour, time at the lake for a swim, and the opportunity to speak to our coaches about your college goals.

Monks Youth Sports Camp

Dates: Monday, July 21st – Thursday, July 24th, 2025

Ages: 6 – 13

Time: 9:00 AM – 4:00 PM

Location: Alfond Center, Saint Joseph’s College

Cost: $285 (Add-ons: Early Drop-Off $25, Late Pick-Up $25, Both $40)

Register: Click here

The Monks Sports Camp will be conducted on the beautiful campus of Saint Joseph’s College. The Monks Sports Camp is designed to provide children with the opportunity to experience a wide range of sports.  Through games, competitions, and challenges geared to the individual ability levels, campers learn skills for multiple sports, gain self-confidence and acquire a love of sports to match their talents and interests. Counselors are selected with extreme care.  They reflect outstanding teaching ability and the desire to help develop campers into good citizens.

Don’t miss your chance to train, compete, and explore with the Monks this summer! Spots are limited—secure yours today!

They’re at Bishop Feehan in Attleboro to begin their MIAA certification with the Schmidt-led four-hour “Fundamentals of Coaching.”

By the time class is dismissed, the coaches will be fully aware of what amounts to a state of crisis in their profession.

It’s not the lousy pay, long hours, and myriad logistical issues that are anything new.

It’s this cultural moment, a time when winning has never been more highly prized and the $30 billion business of youth sports, combined with NIL compensation, has never been more transactional.

Raising the degree of difficulty is trying to reach the adolescent brains of a post-COVID student-athlete population that is more stressed, vulnerable, and locked in on social media than ever.

But above all else, it’s the increasingly demanding parents concerned with their child’s playing time or the team’s success that successful longtime coaches agree are the toughest of all the challenges.

Trevor Gagnier, girls’ basketball coach at Apponequet the last 15 years, has learned to lay out the program’s foundation and expectations to parents and players before the season begins.

“If you don’t do that early, that’s how you get screwed,” said Gagnier. “And if someone’s telling you, ‘No, everything’s been perfect for the last 15 years,’ well, tell me where he or she’s coaching, because that doesn’t usually happen.”

Steve Dembowski has been coaching football for 32 years ― at Milton since 2015, and at Swampscott for more than 20 years prior.

When he became a parent of a student-athlete, he realized he needed to engage with parents if he wanted them to be allies rather than foes.

“Something that’s really changed, which I think haunts a lot of coaches, is that communication with athletes and their parents is even more important than ever and a lot of coaches still want to be old school ― ‘I’m not gonna talk about the team or your kid,’ ” said Dembowski. “That’s a mistake now, when you need to be open and honest with families.”

To be demanding and not demeaning with student-athletes while keeping a team striving for excellence is the standard practice for current coaches.

Adding what it takes to corral parents into a positive force and still maintain the passion is beyond exhausting for some.

“I’m an executive leadership coach, right, but some days I feel like a therapist because of the adult coaches that break down on calls with me because of the stress, the pressure, and the embarrassment of some of these situations that come up within the job,” said J.P. Nerbun, a former youth, high school, college, and semi-pro basketball coach who founded TOC Culture Consulting and is the author of “The Coach’s Guide to Sports Parents.”

Nerbun steers some of the coaches to therapy.

He asks all of them to remember why they’re there in the first place.

“The greatest challenge for coaches is to continue to know themselves, to know why they coach, to make sure that they are actually doing the work to become and behave in a way that produces an impact and helps people grow,” he said.

That’s a far cry from the “my way or the highway” coaches who once ruled their roosts.

Those are being weeded out, along with the extreme examples of the bad-apple coaches who grab the wrong kind of headlines for crossing the line from tough to abusive coaching.

When the new breed of “Ted Lasso”-like coaches understand their mission as well as the mind-sets of students and parents, the odds of a more positive and stable experience for all three legs of the youth sports stool should increase.

Being an expert on the next best thing in the X’s and O’s of their particular sport is almost an afterthought for coaches these days.

“Even though the game is changing, coaches need to also recognize what is acceptable and what actually works better with the way they’re interacting with their players,” said Jason Sacks, CEO of Positive Coaching Alliance, a national organization that trains and supports coaches. “Sometimes coaches don’t see that connection of, ‘Hey, you know what? Guess what? Kids are different now. And you know what I need to do? I need to evolve as a coach and be able to meet them where they’re at.’ ”

They’re at a place where athletes conditioned to the immediacy of social media want instant results, to know why they’re being coached a particular way, and where they’re not used to direct feedback and criticism.

“High school kids right now are under a tremendous amount of stress. Whether we think they’re ‘soft’ or not doesn’t matter,” said coaching development expert Karen Collins, a former collegiate field hockey and lacrosse athlete and coach and an associate professor at the University of New Hampshire. “If you can build honest and earnest relationships with athletes where you’re transparent and you back up what you say you’re going to do, then that has opened up the window for you to be a ‘tough coach,’ and that’s OK.”

She pointed out that parents want what’s best for their kids. Most do all they can to support their child’s team and coach. It’s a small minority who lose perspective.

When they act out in the belief, for example, that their child needs more playing time, their behavior has an outsized impact on coaches.

National data on retention of school coaches is scarce, but if perception and anecdotes add up to reality, then there aren’t enough of them. Schmidt said flatly, “There is a shortage of highly qualified candidates,” and said lately his applicant pool is “less of the Pacific Ocean, more of the kiddie pool.”

National surveys by the Aspen Institute, of coaches in 2022 and parents of student-athletes in 2024, found that 80 percent of both groups believed there was a shortage of high-caliber coaches.

The percentage of coaches age 55 and older has grown over the last few years, which points to younger coaches leaving the profession.

And while 80 percent of the coaches surveyed reported feeling satisfied, the percentage was nearly matched by moderately, very, and extremely stressful experiences. As an academic paper published in “Strategies: A Journal for Physical and Sport Educators” pointed out last July, the coaches survey pointed to parents as “key contributors” to that stress. Seventeen percent of school coaches reported that parents often or always criticize their performance, with barely more than half the coaches hearing appreciation.

“We hear about the problem parents all the time and so we exacerbate the problem, but it’s those problems that are running coaches out of the profession, there’s no doubt,” said Collins. “I think if we took a step back and thought about, why are the parents so angry? It’s because it’s this same transactional thing ― they’re worried about the potential for their child.”

Tim Brillo is in his 15th year as AD at Ludlow and was a longtime coach of the girls’ basketball team.

Like Schmidt, he’s one of the 20-plus certified instructors of the MIAA coaches certification clinic, which began in 1998 and is held 20 to 30 times throughout the year. Coaches hired prior to Aug. 1, 1998, do not have to take the course, and all first serving as a coach after July 1, 2005, must complete it, along with an approved first-aid course.

“In my conversations, coaches were run out by a group of parents simply because their kid wasn’t getting playing time, and recently it was, ‘We need to change the coach because it’s the coach’s fault,’ ” said Brillo. “It’s hard enough to find coaches. Then, when you finally do find somebody that’s willing to do it, there’s these outside pressures and expectations on you from parents.”

Mastering that coach-athlete-parent triangle takes up most of the morning in Attleboro.

There’s also a section devoted to a long list of managerial concerns, such as an emergency care plan, field and dugout conditions, strength and conditioning, rules and regulations, and legal liability.

One breakout group delves into, “Why did you get into coaching?”

Responses ranged from wanting to influence kids in a positive direction, love of the game, and those impacted by wonderful or awful coaches.

“Anyone talk about winning?” Schmidt asked.

No hands.

“Of course we want to be successful, that’s OK, but is that your focus? If your answer is yes, that’s a problem,” said Schmidt.

When the class ended, Corey Flynn, Winchester’s assistant ultimate Frisbee coach, said he thought the course hit all the right notes.

Flynn hadn’t always appreciated the magnitude of a coach’s job.

“We have about 60 players who are attached to like 100-plus family members, and then with various school administrators involved, you rapidly become the center of about 200 people that have very direct contact with you on a regular basis,” said Flynn. “That’s probably the thing that I was shocked by. I was like, ‘Oh, this will be great. I’m going to show up, I’m going to coach kids,’ and I didn’t understand it’s going to be a much bigger responsibility than that.”

The responsibilities can feel daunting, said Flynn.

Luckily, he has a solid foundation in order to not be overwhelmed.

“Most coaches are lying if they don’t have days like, ‘This train has left the station and I’m on it and I can’t get off,’ but the good news is that generally kids are awesome,” he said. “You do it because it fulfills you and it helps amplify other people and all that stuff. That’s so worth it.

“And most days you feel that side of it.”

Share your thoughts on the state of high school coaching in the comments.

Michael Silverman can be reached at michael.silverman@globe.com.

COLUMBUS – Eighty youth basketball teams from around the Southeast will converge on Columbus this weekend for the second FLY & STY Hustle basketball tournament.

The event features around 10 area teams, representing Columbus, Noxubee County, Starkville and West Lowndes, as well as those from Louisiana and Tennessee, ranging in age from third-12th grade. Games are scheduled for both courts at MUW’s Pohl Gymnasium as well as the main gym, auxiliary gym and middle school gyms in New Hope and the middle and high school gyms in Caledonia.

Tournament co-organizer Shelly McElveen, who runs the FLY Girls basketball club, said this tournament, while important for those with dreams of playing at an NCAA level, is focused on more than just exposure for players.

“This is a great opportunity for Columbus and all surrounding areas,” McElveen said. “We’re looking at an influx of 3,500 people, and that (benefits) restaurants, hotels, just the economy itself. If anybody would like to come out and support, this is a major event and it’s only getting bigger.”

The tournament’s other organizer, Donel Briggs, who runs the Saving the Youth (STY) basketball program, said that while he believes travel – and, more importantly, exposure to other places – is key to helping young men develop, the benefits of having a local showcase are many. According to Briggs, Saving The Youth uses basketball as a tool to teach life skills and to benefit the community.

“It means a lot. I was always taught to raise the bar,” Briggs said. “And part of raising the bar means trying to show the city that we’re bringing in revenue to the city. We’ve been asking for a while for the city to come along with us on a multi-sport gym … which, in return, will make the city boom.”

McElveen’s FLY Girls organization, which was established in 2019, provides advanced coaching and participation opportunities for the girls involved, but it also provides opportunities for young players to make an impact in their community. McElveen said in the past year alone, FLY Girls served meals to the unhoused at both Thanksgiving and Christmas, and provided tutoring and ACT preparation services for FLY Girls participants.

McElveen said the tournament is a great way for basketball fans to come together and enjoy two days of high-caliber competition, but that its impact reaches well beyond the court.

“Basketball is bigger than just basketball,” McElveen said. “Basketball opens doors and provides opportunities with various networks that are unreachable in other ways. It provides connections, lifelong friendships and other adventures outside of basketball and even a possible opportunity for a free education. Whether it’s junior college, NAIA or Division I, basketball provides opportunities and it also allows our girls an outlet outside of school, outside of their daily routine, to build bonds and friendships that last a lifetime.”

Briggs echoed those thoughts in an interview with The Dispatch.

“Our organization is so much bigger than basketball,” Briggs said. “Basketball is just a strategy. Our mindset at STY is to help these young men survive.”

The tournament tips off at 6 p.m. Friday at New Hope High School with a meet and greet and two showcase games. Tournament play begins in earnest at 8 a.m. Saturday with doors opening at 7:30 a.m. at both the MUW and New Hope tournament sites. Single-day tickets are $20 while two-day passes are $35 and can be purchased at the door or online at https://basketball.exposureevents.com/229140/hustle-tournament.

Philip Poe is sports editor.