FLAGSTAFF — With so many options for student-athletes to play sports these days, it’s still nice to see that summer basketball is the place to be for high school teams in the month of June.

The annual Northern Arizona University Team Camp took place this past weekend and supported 34 varsity, junior varsity and freshman teams from across the state. From Ash Fork, to Gilbert, to Maryvale, to Payson, to Prescott, to Window Rock, to Winslow and beyond, players worked hard to develop their game within a program system and more importantly, began building team chemistry for the upcoming 2026-27 season.

That “team chemistry” is even more necessary for clubs like Maryvale, which went 19-7 a season ago but saw their top player, 5-foot-10 point guard Adrian Stubbs, graduate and head to Pima Community College.

Stubbs made national news last season after scoring 100 points in a game against Kofa (Yuma), breaking the state record of 75 points set by George McCormick in 1966.

“It means everything to come up here [to NAU]. The kids need the opportunities; they want to play as much as they can and get that camaraderie. Obviously, we lost Adrian Stubbs he’s gone on to better pastures. So, we have to re-load and get guys reps,” coach Jeremy Smith said, adding that his program is in good shape.

“We have a lot of guys who are athletic, and raw. They need the reps,” Smith said.

Maryvale faced 6A Gilbert on the first day of camp May 6, a great opening challenge in the first few weeks of summer basketball.

“We hadn’t faced any challenges yet this summer, so we’ll get a big challenge right out of the game with these guys,” Smith said prior to the game.

For The Gregory School, which finished 19-10 and won the 1A South a season ago, coach Craig Everson loves coming to Flagstaff in the summer.

“We’ve been coming here [for years], it’s nice, I love the staff up here, and they always find us a way to get us the right competition,” Everson said, whose team made the four-plus hour trip from Tucson to attend the camp.

“It’s 25 degrees cooler than Tucson, for one,” Everson laughed when asked why NAU and Flagstaff with so many other summer ball options.

From Tempe, Corona del Sol made the trip to NAU and assistant coach Donnell Knight said coming to Flagstaff is a “good environment” and the competition is good.

“This is really organized, and we are having a good time,” Knight said. “We get to bond coming up here, spend some time getting to know each other. We also get to see how guys respond on the road. It’s very rare that our road trips are this far. So, we get to see how our players respond. We can expose them in the summer, and that’s what we’re here for.”

It’s not just a three-hour bus ride, but also the altitude in Flagstaff at 7,000 feet is a challenge.

“They were a little winded after the first game, a little sluggish like they have sand in their boots, but they go the job done,” Knight said.

The summer moves forward with several great tournaments along the way, including one of the nation’s premier basketball events in the Section 7 Tournament on June 12-14 at the Arizona Athletic Grounds in Mesa.

Brian M. Bergner Jr. has covered professional, collegiate and high school sports for more than 20 years. Follow him on X at @AzPreps365Brian or on Facebook at @Five2MediaWorks. Have a story idea? Email Brian at bbergner@azpreps365.com.