BATON ROUGE — For the second straight summer, members of the LSU women’s basketball team and former LSU and WNBA guard Quianna Chaney held a free youth basketball clinic through the Baton Rouge Recreational Department’s Sports Academy on Tuesday evening at the Lester Roberts Gymnasium.
LSU associate head coach Bob Starkey, All-Southeastern Conference forward LaSondra Barrett, senior Katherine Graham, junior point guard Destini Hughes and freshmen Jeanne Kenney and Theresa Plaisance joined Chaney for the clinic that has become an annual event in the Baton Rouge community.
“We very much appreciated our partnership with BREC and the opportunity it affords us to work in the Baton Rouge Community,” Starkey said. “Our student-athletes always do a great job of working with the kids which makes it a win-win situation.
“It was also a privilege to spend some time in the Lester Roberts Center. It is not lost on us that some of LSU’s greatest basketball players like Garrett and Collis Temple, Glen Davis and Tyrus Thomas along with our own Seimone Augustus and Quianna Chaney got their start in this building.”
The clinic featured fundamentals of the game, including ball handing, shooting and passing drills. The players also joined the kids in a few games of “knockout” while also showing the campers on the importance of getting open on the floor without the ball.
Each camper was then able to meet and greet each of the players and get autographs signed. The entire group of kids was able to take a team photo with the players.
“It was a great opportunity to work with the kids and be involved in our community here in Baton Rouge,” Barrett said. “These are the things we have always done with the Lady Tiger program and will continue to do. We showed them some of the drills we actually use in practice, and it was just a great way to have a positive influence on kids here.”