Steven Adams is back in New Zealand this week to run three basketball camps for children from 8 to 17 years old. They are 5-hour camps held on one-day. The Auckland one was yesterday with a large number of kids and many expert coaches to help out. Palmerston North camp is next on Sunday, and Dunedin on 22nd August. Then later on Sunday 19th, Maori Television will be screening the Steven Adams High School Invitational basketball game at 4pm and then On Demand.
Basketballer, Steven Adams, aged 25 and 2.13m in height, plays for the Oklahoma City Thunders in the NBA. He is New Zealand’s richest athlete, on a salary of US$22.47m. He is very popular, with a huge number of fans both in the US and in New Zealand. He comes from a very large family which includes Valerie Adams our gold medal shot putter. Their mother was Tongan, the father British. They lived in Auckland when he was growing up but after his father died when he was 13, he lost interest in going to school. Then one of his brothers, who is also a basketball player, took him to Wellington, and enrolled him in a private school. There he trained hard before school and after school, to become a good basketball player and also studied hard to win a sports scholarship to an American university in 2012.
The basketball camps are funded by Adams who wants to encourage more children to play basketball. Numbers of basketball players have been increasing for both girls and boys in the last few years and perhaps this is because of Steven Adams. He wants more New Zealand high school students to think about trying for sports scholarships to American universities. He also thinks that American basketball recruiters now realise that New Zealand is a good country for finding talent and they need to visit during basketball tournaments.
Vocabulary
• talent – ability, in this case, sports ability
• recruiters – people who recruit, people who choose someone for a job
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