2009 NCAA Article about the camp

THE LOVE BOAT WITH RAY MEYER

6/28/2009

Filed Under NCAA Basketball BASKETBALL AND TUBING COMBINE FOR ONE SURREAL EXPERIENCE!

Like the Chicago Bulls, I was “Gone Fishin” following Thursday night’s defeat to the Detroit Pistons at the United Center. No. This wasn’t my twisted way of coping with the Bulls tough end to the season; rather it was a piece of cruel irony. My father, brother and I had planned a fishing trip on the Mississippi River for this past weekend (hence the break in my blog as there was no wireless in our log cabin), and we were left as disappointed as Bulls fans with the results of Game Six.

Following two days on the Mississippi River on the outskirts of the Illinois-Iowa border in Savannah, Illinois, we were left with a whopping 12 or 13 fish. I caught a grand total of four fish and ended up with more mosquito bites on my left arm (nine) than the number of bites on the end of my fishing line. While a disappointing experience, it was good to get away for a while and be near the water.

Speaking of the water, the fishing experience has made me recall another time on the water. No. It doesn’t have anything to do with fishing, but rather has something to do naturally with basketball, a topic for which this blog is built around, tubing and former DePaul Men’s Basketball Coach Ray Meyer. Here’s the story and I hope you enjoy.

The summer between seventh and eighth grade, I attended Ray Meyer’s Basketball Camp in Three Lakes, Wisconsin with my brother, cousin and a couple of childhood acquaintances. Meyer was of course the legendary DePaul basketball coach who coached such players as George Mikan, Mark Aguirre and Terry Cummings.

Meyer coached DePaul to the National Invitation Tournament Title in 1945, reached the Final Four in 1979 where the Blue Demons lost to an Indiana State team led by Larry Bird, and of course was noted for several early tournament exits in the 1980s with highly-ranked DePaul teams. Hired in 1942 at the trendy university in Chicago, Meyer finished with a career record of 724-354 upon his retirement in 1984. His son Joey replaced him at the time and was later forced to resign in 1997 after running the program into the ground.

With all that said, the Ray Meyer basketball camp was set up on a large lot of land, with anywhere from four to six concrete full-courts on the property. As the camp started, I quickly learned that Meyer was far from the jovial man that he appeared to be on television and in public.

At his pick-and-roll station, Meyer called all of us “little jerks” for not being able to set a proper screen-and-roll. While surprising at the time for a 13-year-old kid, it now is laughable thinking back of Meyer, who died at an assisted living facility at the age of 92 in 2006, getting so angry at a bunch of young kids who were learning the game and not recruited athletes. In fact, our parents had shelled out some money for us to go to this camp.

Meyer often wondered why none of us could get down the screen and roll and why his cocky and untalented grandson Brian was the only one to be able to do so. (Sidenote: the highlight of my week stay at the Ray Meyer camp came when I blocked a Brian Meyer shot out of play during a game, with the ball rolling down a hill and into a forest adjacent to the court).

Certainly a character, Meyer liked to call my brother Tim, two years younger than me, “Lefty” for his left-handed shot. He also laughed at my tee-shirt stating that “You’re in Kleinschmidt Kountry.” Tom Kleinschmidt was my basketball idol, a former Gordon Tech basketball star who had just finished his stellar career at DePaul during the 1994-1995 season. After seeing my shirt, Meyer scoffed at me and said “Not any more.”

Anyways, the camp was set up with basketball skills training from like eight in the morning to lunch around noon. Following lunch, there would be pickup games on the various courts for the different age levels. The pickup games would then be followed by a couple of hours for much-need break time, a perfect time for us kids to screw around, hit the lake and cause mischief.

During the second day at the camp, I decided to go tubing on the lake during the break. Meyer would take the campers tubing in a giant oval on the lake on his speedboat and actually drive the vehicle himself. After waiting in line and getting to my turn, I jumped into the water and onto the inflatable raft.

Once getting on the raft, you had two choices: a thumbs up or thumbs down. When interpreted by Meyer and a camp counselor in the back of the boat, a thumbs up meant that you were a DePaul fan. A thumbs down meant that you were not a DePaul fan, and Meyer was going to do his very best to try and flip you off the tube while in the water.

Even though I was a DePaul fan, I gave Meyer and his assistant the old thumbs down. I wanted to get flipped and thought it would be much more fun. Both men nodded their head and off the boat went. About halfway around the lake, Meyer hit a wave and launched me off the tube. I landed straight on my back in the cold water and for a moment, thought I was paralyzed from the shock.

I was certainly not expecting so much pain from being flipped off the tube, as this was my first experience tubing. In fact, I was pretty nervous and embarrassed at what had happened. When Meyer circled around the boat to pick me up, I rushed back onto the tube.

However, I was not fully on the tube as the boat picked up speed, and naturally my shorts began to fall down. With my dangling shorts in great danger of being sent off into the deep abyss of the lake, I had to drop off the tube a few seconds later. I was the only kid to fall off the tube twice and certainly hung my head in shame as I finished up my ride and had to walk past the other kids in line.

After my struggles tubing, I was determined to do it again and prove my mettle. I certainly wasn’t doing so on the basketball court. Not being selected to the Camp All-Star Team for my age level later in the week was one of my biggest disappointments in basketball at the time.

Two days later after the initial tubing experience, a grade school friend and I went down to the lake to give it another shot. The line on the wooden deck, extended about two feet out of the water, was long this time. We quickly got into the line and slowly moved our way up when Meyer loaded his next victim, a kid who had to be about 10 or 11 years old. The kid gave the thumbs up and Meyer nodded in approval. The boat began in what would be one of the strangest and most memorable experiences of my childhood.

The first three-fourths of this tubing ride was nothing out of the ordinary as Meyer sped around the lake and did not flip the kid. However, as Meyer made his final turn around the lake to the dock, he turned the boat very wide, aligning the kid on a direct path with the dock. While surprising to see Meyer make such a wide turn, we all figured he would get the boat back on the right course as he was some 200 or 300 yards away.

Yet as the boat approached, Meyer kept it on the dangerous course and that’s when everyone on the dock began to turn around and look at each other thinking, “What the hell is going on here.” As the boat came closer to the dock, you could see the look of the poor kid’s face as he approached his destination. Displaying a smile that sensed utter disbelief, the kid couldn’t believe what was about to happen but geared up for the collision. The same could be said for us kids on the dock, who saw this unlucky kid speed closer to us in slow motion.

While Meyer was able to get the boat out of harm’s way, he slammed the inner tube and the kid into it the dock. Luckily, the kid did not skid over the top of the dock or hit his head on it. Rather, he was shot under the dock, which collapsed from impact and sent me and nearly 20 other kids into the shallow water of jagged rocks.

As some kids writhed in pain and screamed that they had hurt themselves badly during the fall, Meyer looked indifferent all the while and summoned the next kid to jump onto the tube. The counselor in the back of the boat had to be in his thirties and had a similar stunned expression on his face. You could read the guy’s mind which was saying, “I can’t believe the old man crashed the kid into the dock.”

Whether Meyer was hammered or just out of it, I don’t know. As we all picked ourselves out of the water, Meyer sped off with the next passenger. Somewhere along the middle of that ride, Meyer must have had an epiphany of what he had just done. As he finished the ride, he announced that the tubing was done for the day. In fact, there would be no tubing the rest of the week.

No one was seriously hurt during the strange experience, and the rest of the week went fast. I had never wanted to be home like my desire to leave the Ray Meyer Basketball Camp. I had grown tired of the rubbery fish sticks, maggoty bread and other “pleasures” of the stay. As we boarded the bus to leave the camp, Meyer came on and said thanks to all of us for coming.

He walked up to me and noted my Notre Dame sweatshirt. Notre Dame was of course a rival to DePaul and Meyer goofed around that I needed to take off the sweatshirt. He then laughed and told me to “tell my friends” about the camp for next summer. Telling the biggest lie of my life, I told him that I would do so, knowing that I wouldn't send my worst enemy to such a place.

Some 3½ hours later, our greyhound bus arrived back in Chicago, outside DePaul’s campus. My brother and I were never so happy to see my parents, who were waiting with eager smiles on their faces. Asking how the camp was, my brother and I just laughed and asked if we could go to McDonald’s for some real food. At the time, the experience was a nightmare. Looking back, it’s a great childhood memory.