East Mountain Camp Focuses on Giving Players a Head Start

SANDIA PARK — The future of East Mountain basketball is currently rotating through high-speed stations, diving into defensive slides, and learning that while you cannot control a referee’s whistle, you can always control your own effort.

Inside the gym at the Vista Grande Community Center, 50 local youth are participating in the inaugural East Mountain Athletic Complex basketball skills camp. The seven-hour, two-day intensive program marks a major developmental milestone for the region’s hoops pipeline, designed to give local athletes a foundational head start before entering competitive school programs.

The camp is spearheaded by Blake Harden, who was recently hired as the new middle school boys and girls head basketball coach. An Albuquerque native, Harden brings a championship pedigree to the East Mountains, having won multiple state titles at Hope Christian High School before playing at the University of New Mexico under former head coaches Richie McKay and Steve Alford.

After graduating from UNM in 2007, Harden focused on coaching his own four children—ranging in age from 7 to 13—and running private, hour-long weekly training sessions out of his backyard gym. The East Mountain camp represents his first major step into a school-sanctioned coaching role, a challenge he embraces with clear intentionality.

“This camp is really about developing some foundational understanding of basketball with this age and kind of our location in the East Mountains,” Harden said. “I want to give them access to all of that information, so that when they get to their mid-school programs, their high school programs, they’re not already at a disadvantage.”

Harden’s primary focus centers on what he calls “attitude and effort”—the non-negotiable variables of sports.

“We can’t always control how the refs respond, how the other team plays, what happens, the environment, but we control how hard we work and the attitude and how we respond to that,” Harden explained. “A lot of times I think we shortchange [kids] and say, ‘Oh, they’re not ready to learn this,’ but they can pick it up. How quickly they can learn and improve is amazing.”

A Partnership for Future Success

To bridge the gap between youth development and varsity success, Harden coordinated directly with East Mountain High School varsity basketball coaches, Ron Drake and Brad Hofmann, to ensure the camp’s curriculum mirrors the expectations of the upper-level programs. Campers spend their mornings focusing on core technical mechanics—passing, cutting, setting proper screens, closeouts, and help-side defense—before transitioning into afternoon three-on-three tournaments.

Harden credited East Mountain High School Athletic Director Casey Giovanco for fostering a rising culture of athletic success across all sports programs, a momentum he intends to capitalize on starting at the middle school level.

“The basketball program last year was fun to watch,” Harden said. “Coach Drake, of course, has a long history of success. [The staff has] really done a great job of turning the program into an actual program… I hope to build on that as well, starting in the mid-school.”

Learning Through Teaching

The camp’s staff includes a dedicated rotation of current East Mountain High School basketball players, who have found that instructing the next generation requires a distinct set of skills.

“It’s been a great learning opportunity for me specifically, because as I teach them the skills, I learn them better,” said incoming sophomore Kate Hushman, who balanced her coaching duties with refereeing afternoon scrimmages. “Most of the kids here are pretty keen on getting better at basketball.”

Hushman noted that managing short attention spans and a variety of young egos gave her a newfound appreciation for what her own varsity coaches face.

“It really takes the players buying into what they’re doing, the drills, and the program they’re in,” Hushman said. “If you don’t really have that, it’s kind of hard to coach them. [Coach Drake] probably faced that with us when we thought we knew what we were talking about. I just hope I leave a positive impact on these kids. I hope they leave this wanting to play more basketball.”

For incoming senior Genesis Navarro-Chavez, a former competitive boxer who didn’t have access to similar basketball youth camps growing up, the experience is about community outreach and fostering resilience.

“I like his coaching style. He’s very relationship-based,” Navarro-Chavez said of Harden. “At this age, kids want to win. They’re competitive. So helping them realize that sometimes things are not going to go your way is very important once they get to high school.”

Navarro-Chavez emphasized that teaching young players how to navigate mistakes is the camp’s most valuable byproduct.

“If you have a positive attitude, even if you mess up, keep shooting. Even if you fall, just keep playing,” Navarro-Chavez said. “When they’re at that younger age, they get really hurt if they don’t win or if they mess up. We just help them learn that it’s okay to mess up.”