Crater High Basketball gets creative to stay active during the summer

CENTRAL POINT, Ore. — Summer is normally the time for high school athletes to improve their skills, but the pandemic has changed much of that. For Crater High School senior Nate Bittle, one of the nation’s top high school basketball players, it’s meant a summer of travel – is off the table.

Now, Crater High School is using a different system to warm up for the season. Around this time of year, Crater Basketball rising senior — Nathan Bittle should be in L.A. competing against the country’s best high school basketball players. But in 2020, training doesn’t look the same.

“The month of June is like our high school summer ball so we’d be doing that right now, and then after June is when I go back down to L.A. to play with my AAU teammates, but we haven’t been able to start any of that because of all this stuff,” Bittle said.

Like everyone else, the 6’10” senior had to make changes during the pandemic, but training has stayed a priority.

“I’ve still been able to get into gyms and workout and stuff like that with my dad,” Bittle said. “I’ve been running a mountain, Roxy Ann lately, so I’ve been staying in shape and still working out.”

Now he’s adding another layer, as Crater started summer basketball practice Monday. The team is now separated into two groups of ten. One practice during the day, the other in the evening to reduce the risk of coronavirus. With no end in sight for this pandemic, Crater’s coach hopes Nate and his team can use this unique structure to their advantage.

“They all have things that they need to work on, and to be able to dial in and have the time to be able to do that is a tremendous opportunity,” Head Coach, Chris Schmerbach said.

Crater athletics has it’s summer sports programs on a two-week schedule. Every couple of weeks they will reevaluate to see whether it’s safe to move forward. The next scheduled date is June 30th.