Hooping it up in the summer

CREEKSVILLE — Baseball has always been considered a year round sport for amateurs in the area. Travel teams pack up and hit the round no matter what month it is. Soccer is another sport area kids play for long stretches during the year and football followed in their footsteps beginning last summer with the seven-on-seven passing leagues. Fans should have known it wouldn’t be long before basketball was next and it has happened. The brian child of Northampton-East basketball Coach Jeff Ramsey and Athletic Director Greg Watford, the Northampton Summer Basketball league hopes to become a premiere event in the development of hoops talent in the Roanoke Valley.

Ramsey was looking for a way for his team to improve during the summer months and approached Watford about any ideas. The two decided on a summer league, called up a few teams from the surrounding area and got things underway. “We went out and got everybody we needed to complete this thing,” Ramsey said Wednesday before his team took on Hertford County.

Along with the host Rams, five other teams make up the summer league. Local teams Weldon and Southeast Halifax along with Gates County, Bertie and Herftord counties make up the field. Girls and boys teams participated in an effort to improve the on-court product fans will see come November.

“That’s why a lot of teams are so good because they play year round,” Ramsey said. “They play as a team and that’s why so many teams are better than we are in the area. So we are getting this together and keeping it going for a while to get the guys some exposure and keep them playing during the entire year.”

Ramsey said the hardest part is being a 1-A school, a lot of guys play football and are doing summer workout drills for that sport also. “We have guys who are basically going to be doing both year round,” adding, “it’s going to be very hard. It’s harder to get the guys in here to practice after they have been lifting weights. But with success comes a lot of hard work, so they just have to man up and do it.