Maci Morris, Blair Green host 606 Girl's Basketball Camp in Pineville

One of the best things to come out of the new name, image, and likeness era thus far has been the involvement of student-athletes within the community. NIL has provided more opportunities for top athletes to share their talents with others while helping teach valuable life lessons along the way. Basketball camps have long been at the forefront as one of the many aspects in which NIL can have a positive impact on everyone involved.

Kentucky Women’s Basketball players are taking full advantage of what is now available at their fingertips — while getting paid to do so.

On Friday and Saturday, former Kentucky Wildcat Maci Morris and current graduate student Blair Green hosted an all-girls basketball camp at Pineville High School, appropriately titled the 606 Girl’s Basketball Camp. Saturday’s camp included girls in grades K-8 while Friday focused on high schoolers.

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Morris and Green are both proud eastern Kentucky mountain girls who came up with the idea for the camp in order to help inspire young girls across their home area. Instruction included a glimpse at what a college basketball practice is like, plenty of drills, and one-on-ones.

”Ever since I went to UK, I always knew I wanted to come back and give back because a lot of people overlook Eastern Kentucky and some of the players here so I just want to like be an inspiration to these girls and say like if we can do it so can you and I don’t want people to overlook the girls from here,” Morris said, according to LEX18.

Morris graduated from UK in 2019 after a successful four years at Bell County High School while Green spent four equally as impressive years at Harlan County High School. She left the school as the program’s sixth all-time leading scorer with nearly 1,700 career points. Green is in her fifth and final year with Kentucky WBB and is expected to contribute at a high level for the 2022-23 season as the team’s veteran leader.

“I’m a captain on the team, so being able to do these camps have just really worked on my leadership and just giving back to my community and trying to make an impact on the girls around me and just saying they can play at this level too,” Green said.

Green has already taken on a leadership role after suffering an Achilles injury ahead of last season that sidelined her throughout the year. She became known as “Coach Green” around the Joe Craft Center despite not being able to play and has continued to act like a coach ever since. Green has been touring the state throughout the summer, sharing her basketball knowledge with the next generation of hoopers.

Morris and Green aren’t the only ones helping out the young local hoopers, either. Junior guard Maddie Scherr, who is also from the state of Kentucky, hosted an all-girl basketball camp of her own on Sunday through the Griffin Elite program, which is where Scherr played her AAU basketball while at Ryle High School.