Work pays off for Jackson’s camp
Published 1:00 pm Wednesday, July 20, 2022
- No lights, no problem for those participating in Tadric Jackson’s basketball camp last weekend. Ample sunlight and emergency lights meant that Jackson and his assistants had no problem seeing everyone’s double pumps and fakes.
TIFTON — Tadric Jackson lasted suited up for Tift County’s basketball team in the 2013-14 state championship victory over Wheeler. Eight years has passed since he dribbled a basketball in the Palace, but over the weekend it was like he never left.
Jackson hosted his first ever camp July 16-18 in Tifton, one that he wants to be an annual tradition. He’s off to a good start. More than 50 boys and girls joined him and his assistants for the camp, which featured everything from stretches to set plays, from basic dribbling to setting screens.
The camp went well, even factoring in a neighborhood power outage Saturday morning that meant the gym was only lit by sunlight and its emergency lights.
The power outage was unplanned, of course. Everything else was months of work by Jackson to prepare. Even so, he admitted he was barely able to sleep last Thursday night in nervous anticipation that the first day of camp was finally here.
Signups opened at 3 p.m. July 16. Jackson initially knew of 47 athletes participating, but that number kept rising as kids kept trickling through the main gym door in advance of the camp’s 4 p.m. start.
Jackson said the genesis was a conversation he had with a coach about how much he missed basketball. “I missed being around in the gym,” he said. It came to him that he wanted to host a camp. Once the timing became right, Jackson put his plan in motion.
“It was like a voice came to my head: ‘Do your camp’,” he said. Jackson began planning, wanting to make sure he got it right, then sought out Tift County athletic director Chris Martin. He had to wait on the next board of education meeting. Finally, “I got the OK for the gym,” he said, then Jackson set to work on the flyer and putting all of his ideas in action.
After a stellar career at Tift and Georgia Tech, Jackson played overseas with AB Contern in Luxembourg in 2019. But, like many professional athletes, his 2020 was sent into a spin because of a coronavirus. These days, Jackson is coaching.
“I’m coaching at Supreme Atlanta,” he said. Supreme is an AAU basketball club.
