ST. LOUIS — If you're looking for something different to do this Father's Day weekend, a St. Louis coach is calling on dads to join their sons on the basketball court.
It’s an open invitation for hours of shooting hoops. The coach hopes it will lead to so much more.
"Let’s go Mike. It’s on you,” Coach Bryan Turner yelled to a player on his court.
“It's on me?” Mike Finney asked before shooting a basket.
“Don't let us down Mike,” Turner yelled out.
“Oh baby!" Finney said with excitement after scoring.
If there's anyone saying, "I want to be like Mike," perhaps it’s a 10-year-old player who's also on the court.
Little Sean was keeping up with a player more than double his age: his father.
"It's fun because he makes jokes and he tries to make me miss,” Sean Finney said.
But if you ask Mike....
"My knees are definitely not doing well,” he said.
He still wouldn't want to be anywhere else than right here, right now.
"They enjoy beating us, you know," Finney said with a smile.
Coach Bryan Turner is working to create more bonds like this. At the very least, for bragging rights.
"Parents kind of get on their kids about 'you should shoot a lay-up this way. You should shoot it like this,' so now this is an opportunity for the dads to actually show the kids ‘this is how it's done' because you always hear those stories 'back in my day,'" Turner said.
Saturday morning, the coach behind the Bryan Turner Basketball Summer Camp will hold his very first Father & Son Camp. It will happen at St. Mary's Southside Catholic High School from 10 a.m. to noon.
Anyone can sign up.
"We just need to have positive men around constantly teaching and not pass the buck to someone else to say ‘hey they should be taking care of our kids’ or ‘they should be trying to teach our kids’," Turner said.
And what would be a better time to do it than Father’s Day weekend?
Nathan Turner, 12, sees it as an opportunity to draw inspiration. "Every time we play, he tries to get me to play better."
The dads see it as an investment — in time they'll never get back.
"If you don't make that time, it's hard to get that time,” Finney said.
There is a $50 registration fee for the camp. It includes two hours of basketball, T-shirts, and a father and son photo.
To learn more, click here.