Coach Don Friday
30+ years coaching at the D1 and D3 collegiate levels. Now developing the next generation.
How Camp Hoops began
Camp Hoops was founded by Coach Don Friday, a former NCAA Division I head coach with more than thirty years of collegiate coaching experience across both Division I and Division III basketball. Former Bucknell Head Coach Patrick Flannery helped Friday launch Camp Hoops shortly after the pandemic. What began as a way to bring real college level instruction to young players in Central Pennsylvania has grown into a camp where kids of every skill level learn the game the right way.
The idea was simple. Too many youth camps are glorified open gyms. Kids show up, they scrimmage, they go home. Coach Friday wanted something different. He wanted a camp built on the same foundation he used to develop all Americans and 1,000 point scorers at the collegiate level: fundamentals first, competition every day, and coaching that actually reaches each kid individually.
That is why the camper to staff ratio stays at eight to one. That is why campers are grouped by birth year and then adjusted by skill after live evaluation, so nobody is stuck in a group where they are lost or bored. And that is why every counselor on the floor is a current or former collegiate player or coach who has been through the same system.
Campers leave knowing more than they did on Monday. They leave having competed. And they leave wanting to come back next summer, which is exactly what happens year after year.
A resume built on the court
Coach Friday spent more than three decades on collegiate sidelines. He served as an NCAA Division I head coach at Saint Francis University, where his teams competed against programs like North Carolina, Ohio State, Notre Dame, and Pittsburgh. He was named a Regional Coach of the Year in 2022 and has earned multiple conference Coach of the Year honors across his career.
He has won conference championships, led teams to NCAA Tournament victories including wins over nationally ranked top ten opponents, and developed all Americans, 1,000 point scorers, and NCAA statistical champions. Earlier in his career he was on the staff that won a Division III National Championship, and he spent nearly a decade at Bucknell helping build the underdog teams that pulled off NCAA Tournament upsets over Kansas and Arkansas.
He has also worked the floor at some of the most respected basketball camps in the country, including the Hoop Group circuit that draws many of the nation's top prospects.
His program motto has always been the same: diplomas and championships, in that order.
