Kentucky basketball continues to make an impact with help from Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation
While Saturday was all about putting on a show for the fans, Sunday was all about putting smiles on the faces of the next generation of hoopers.
The Kentucky men’s and women’s basketball programs, in association with the Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation, hosted a free basketball skills camp on Sunday afternoon inside the Joe Craft Center gymnasiums. Both head coaches, John Calipari and Kyra Elzy, along with plenty of current Wildcats and coaching staff members, helped run the camp, which is designed to teach underserved boys and girls the game of basketball.
The Mamba & Mambacita Sports Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in memory of Kobe and Gianna Bryant.
“It’s just an honor to be here,” Elzy told the media on Sunday. “Coach Cal called me and said would you be interested in running this clinic with us? It’s an amazing opportunity to honor a legend in Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gigi and for us to be able to put a big blue magic twist on it, it’s truly an honor.”
Young boys and girls filled both basement gyms of the Joe Craft Center. The kids were split into groups and rotated throughout several different drill stations that included 5-on-5 situations, layup lines, how to execute a crossover, and much more. Of course, the kids were taught some valuable lessons through the wise words of Kobe Bryant, too.
Both Calipari and Elzy addressed the group prior to the start of the camp, as did Natalia Bryant, who is the daughter of Kobe and made the trip across the country to Lexington for the special event, which was actually the first of its kind.
“This is the first partnership with any university,” Kat Conlon, executive director of the Mamba and Mambacita Sports Foundation, told the media. “Coach Calipari and Kobe Bryant had a very special relationship, so anything we can do with the foundation that continues to tell the stories of Kobe and Gianna Bryant, we are all game for it with the foundation.”
It was actually Kentucky that reached out to the foundation first, too.
“Kentucky reached out,” Conlon said. “Honestly, I have learned that Kentucky does things in kind of a different way than other schools. They have just taken the extra step of saying what can we do? We love Kobe, we love Gianna, we want to help. And they’ve just invited us with open arms to be welcomed on campus and to host this camp and so we just couldn’t be more grateful.”
After helping raise $162,000 in Pikeville for flood relief on Saturday, Kentucky basketball was back again not even 24 hours later making an impact in the community.
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