caption: ON TRACK: Princeton High alum Jackie Dorman, left, gets ready to go on a train trip with campers in the “High Hoops” program earlier this summer. Dorman, now a senior at the University of Georgia, founded the camp in 2003 in order to create a basketball skills summer program for young girls living in Trenton housing projects.

As It Celebrates Fifth Anniversary, High Hoops Program Branches Out

Bill Alden

In the summer of 2003, Jackie Dorman decided that she wanted to create a basketball skills summer program for young girls living in Trenton housing projects.

Developing her leadership and organizational skills, Dorman, then a rising senior at Princeton High, succeeded in making her dream a reality as the “High Hoops” camp had a successful six-week run at the Donnelly Homes gym.

Now, five years later, High Hoops has branched out well beyond the hardwood, giving its campers a shot at developing other life skills.

Dorman, currently a senior at the University of Georgia, realized that the program needed to diversify its approach.

“There are a lot of kids that were too old for original age range (8-13); we came up with different activities more geared to life building skills,” said Dorman of the camp which met twice a week and ended August 20.

“Wednesday is for basketball, Sundays are for the different activities. One day we did the food pyramid; helping them to learn how to eat healthy. Another day we worked on goal-setting and figuring out different ways to achieve goals.”

The campers went on the road to augment the program. “We did a couple of field trips; we went to Camden Aquarium and learned about sharks and jellyfish,” said Dorman, whose mother, Deborah, has been a driving force behind the founding and development of the camp.

“They got to handle the fish. We took them to 4H festival in Howell. They did community service and as a reward they got to go on the rides. It is about giving back.”

It did take a while, however, for some of the campers to warm to the non-basketball activities.

“The little kids loved it but the older kids were quiet at the beginning,” said Dorman, who credited fellow PHS alum Tamika Borges and her sister, Elisha Jolly, with playing a major role in spearheading the life skills aspect of the program.

“They are not big at opening up so we tried to make it fun for them. By the end they were opening up and some of the older kids were speaking up the most.”

With the camp having been in existence for five years, some of those older kids are applying the lessons learned as they head into their college years.

“Saddie Dennis was a camper and then a counselor and graduated from high school in 2007,” said Dorman.

“She worked last year to help support her family. She was always calling my mom and I, saying that she wanted to get out. We took her down to Mercer County Community College and helped her fill out the application and the financial aid forms and she will be taking classes there this fall.”

While Dorman was busy this summer working as an intern for Madison Square Garden in New York City, she still made time for High Hoops.

“It’s wonderful; I was there most Sundays,” said Dorman. “It’s great to see a kid at 13 and see how much they have changed in a year or two. It’s nice to have a lot of kids at that age; you can really make an impact.”

True to its original mission, the program featured some good action on the basketball court.

“We usually split them up between older and younger kids and then scrimmage,” explained Dorman.

“This year we had six or seven boys as opposed to one or two in the past. They made the basketball better; they were more intense. The girls would play around in the past but with the boys there, it was more serious. The older kids wanted to start a team. We haven’t been able to pull that off but we did get an AAU team to come in a couple Tuesdays and scrimmage.”

In view of the camp’s continued success as it has diversified, Dorman is hoping to pull off another expansion of the High Hoops program.

“We think it would be good to keep up with the kids during the school year and not just see them in the summers,” said Dorman.

“We are working on coming up with something to do once a week. We may rent out a gym or we may just have a study hall or a peer group thing. We want to make sure they are all doing OK and keep up with them during the year.”

And with Dorman’s efforts over the last five years, the High Hoops program is doing better than OK.

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