All American Basketball Camp Founding Director, Gus Alfieri and his son, and current camp Director, Ron Alfieri.
Today would have been my dad’s 88th birthday. My dad was Coach Gus Alfieri and he began this camp back in 1968, 56 years ago. We are working hard on a special project to honor him and to continue his work and I haven’t been able to get a phrase out of my mind for the past few months, “The Right Way.”
My dad was obsessed with doing things the right way and would rage when he thought people were not doing things that way, or even trying. Whether it was basketball training, AAU programs or a contractor working at his house, he would celebrate the effort to do things right and be extremely dissatisfied with the distain people showed for “the right way” by being lazy or sloppy.
He taught me how to play basketball by nailing a plywood backboard to the garage wall and I would go shoot free throws there every morning before afternoon kindergarten. I also got good at math because I needed to keep the stats of my shooting so I used his old scorebooks to record my makes and misses at the 5 foot rim. I would attend his first camp at age 7, later playing for him at St. Anthony’s HS, coaching at the camp from when I was 15 and eventually running the camp with him for the past 38 years. In that time, doing things the right way was his guiding light, his North Star, the light that guided every decision at the camp.
When the campers play “I Beat The Coach” at options, it’s not just a fun game to try and win a button, it’s teaching that the gold is found in the attempt to win the button, not just in winning. It’s the preparation you go through, both mentally and physically, to win the button and it’s the joy you feel when you accomplish that goal. That’s why grown men & women used to come up to my dad and show him their buttons, progress reports and award certificates decades after earning them. Because the camp, led and inspired by Gus Alfieri, had taught that young person the value of earning that award.
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