Greeley’s home team: How UNC Athletics empowers local youth ...Saudi Arabia

This is the fifth installment in a series examining the town-and-gown relationship between the University of Northern Colorado and the city of Greeley. Previous parts explored leadership, major projects, student perspectives and public safety. Today, we look at the university’s athletic programs and how they inspire local athletes.

When it comes to the University of Northern Colorado’s many collegiate athletic programs and the dozens of youth sports programs that also call Greeley home, the summer is time to camp.

It’s also a prime time to connect.

The UNC athletic department, and the various NCAA Division I programs it houses, host about two dozen high school and youth camps and clinics each summer in an array of sports, including basketball, volleyball, football, soccer, wrestling and swimming.

These summer camps certainly aren’t the only instance in which the Bears open their campus — and connect their coaches and athletes — to the thousands of Greeley youth that play competitive sports. But it may be the most high-profile and recognizable instance.

UNC men’s basketball coach Steve Smiley has been in Greeley for 10 years, spending the past six as the Bears’ head coach after serving on the staff as an assistant coach for the previous head coach, Jeff Linder.

During his time at UNC — along with numerous previous coaching stints in places like Weber State (Ogden, Utah) and Sheridan (Wyoming) College  — Smiley has been quick to suggest that reaching beyond the campus’ confines and maintaining a healthy relationship with the surrounding community is the lifeblood of any thriving university.

“The more connected any university is to its town, its community, the better it’s going to be for everybody,” Smiley said. “We’ve really put an emphasis in our program to try to grow that connection and connect with the community even more.”

Youth sports camps have been a major driver for UNC’s connections with the Greeley community

Smiley and his men’s program boost one of the biggest summer high school hoops camps in the western United States, routinely attracting more than 200 teams from as many as eight different states. That normally includes multiple teams from each of the seven Greeley high schools that host basketball programs.

The Bears women’s basketball program has connected with the Greeley youth sports community in similar ways with its own assortment of summer camps.

After arriving at UNC five years ago, Bears head coach Kristen Mattio began working with the university to reintroduce the girls basketball team camp, which had been absent for multiple years from the Bears’ array of summer youth camp offerings.

Mattio said she and her staff are determined to open the door for any young athlete hoping to attend the Bears’ camp. They don’t want a family’s potential financial limitations to be a roadblock.

“I love our summer camps, and not for what we gain but for what we can give,” Mattio said. “I tell our coaches all the time, ‘I’m never going to turn anybody away from camp.’ So if there was ever some kind of hardship, and it is within all of our NCAA rules, we’re going to make it happen.”

In her 10-plus years coaching the Greeley Central High School girls basketball team, Juliet Sheets has maintained a strong connection with the Bears women’s basketball program through past coaches Jaime White, Kamie Ethridge, Jenny Huth and, now, Mattio.

Though UNC’s team camps attract high school programs from all throughout the western United States, Sheets said the Bears staff has a knack for making athletes from local programs feel like they’re a top priority.

“They always reach out to us to make it clear they really want the teams that are local to come in,” Sheets said. “They really promote their individual team camps to us. And also, I just took my (players) to a game a couple weeks ago. I just emailed one of the coaches and said, ‘Hey, can I bring my kids to the game?’ And they were like, ‘Yep. Just send us a list of who’s going to be there.’ ”

Greeley-Evans School District 6 teams are granted free admission to UNC basketball games, which is coordinated between the schools beforehand.

Sheets also credits Mattio and past Bears coaches for taking time out of their busy seasons to be sounding boards for when Sheets wants to explore coaching ideas and strategies that she may want to utilize in her own games at Greeley Central.

During summer team camps, the Bears’ programs connect with local high school in very direct ways, even utilizing many of the seven Greeley high schools’ home facilities to host games for the hundreds of teams that flock to Greeley.

They’ve also hosted games at the Greeley Recreation Center.

During the women’s summer team camps, Mattio even invites the young athletes to watch her Bears squad practice in the mornings before camp. Mattio’s program also hosts a talent show in Bank of Colorado Arena after camp to give the young athletes a fun reprieve from all the work they’re putting in.

For Mattio, these camps offer a rare opportunity for her and her staff to give all of these young players the same time and attention they would normally reserve for a prized recruit.

“We want the player that maybe isn’t a starter to feel just as welcome as the player that starts and maybe plays a little bit more,” Mattio said. “It’s all a learning and growing time in the summer. You want to have fun, but you’ve also got to be competitive within that environment, as they’re learning and growing.”

Through its camp connections, the Bears women’s team also routinely welcomes young area athletes to attend games, sit on the team’s bench and visit the squad’s locker room.

Widespread impact

Smiley points out that UNC’s annual boys hoops team camps likely generate several hundred-thousands of dollars in the span of just a couple days, as campers don’t just utilize facilities on the Bears campus. They also pour money into the local economy by staying in hotels, eating at area restaurants and shopping locally.

But the UNC athletic department’s presence and impact within the Greeley community extends well beyond that of its summer camps.

Bears athletes routinely visit District 6 schools and read to children.

They maintain a healthy, growing connection with Aims Community College

They host youth sports clinics separate from the summer camps.

They referee summer unified sports games.

Longtime Bears women’s volleyball coach Lyndsey Oates has a roster full of athletes who routinely coach local club teams during the summer.

Oates’ program has been well supported by the people — not just the students — of Greeley.

The Bears, in recent years, have ranked in the top 50 in attendance among Division 1 women’s volleyball programs.

And like the aforementioned hoops programs at UNC, Oates volleyball program hosts a well-attended summer team camp that is frequented by high school programs from Greeley and elsewhere.

The volleyball team camp had more than 90 teams this past summer.

District 6 teams participate for free, as this camp also utilizes the local high schools’ facilities.

But as much as these young high school athletes reap benefits from participating in UNC’s camp, Oates said the players on her roster gain just as much.

The camp provides a way for her players to connect with a Greeley community that passionately supports the Bears. UNC players help run the team camp, officiate matches, mentor young athletes and generally help assure the huge camp runs smoothly.

“Our athletes genuinely enjoying doing it,” said Oates, who has coached the Bears since 2005. “Often, it leads to doing private lessons and things that turn into year-round connections. Several of our girls coach club, as well, which usually stems from their camp experience. They really do enjoy giving back to middle school and high school athletes.”

Oates is living proof of the impact these well-connected Bears athletic programs can have on young, impressionable athletes.

Growing up in nearby Eaton and playing high school volleyball there, Oates attended summer UNC camps and Bears matches as a youngster.

Those experiences helped foster her passion for the sport. Oates parlayed that passion into a successful collegiate career at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge before she entered the coaching ranks.

“It was inspiring,” Oates said of her connection with UNC’s program while growing up. “Now, I hope we’re doing the same for girls in our area and even boys, as that sport (boys youth volleyball) grows.”

Sheets’ oldest daughter, Harper, coaches basketball at the college level, while her younger daughter, Hattie, has experience coaching at the high school level.

Juliet Sheets and her husband were friends with famed coach Jaime White when White was the Bears’ women’s basketball coach from 2006-14. They used to go to all the home games.

Sheets recalls the ample time her daughters spent as youth basketball players in Greeley attending UNC games and getting to know the coaches.

She even credits the impression White, her assistant coaches and their players made on her daughters for inspiring them to follow their own playing careers by becoming coaches themselves.

“They saw real people in those roles,” Sheets said. “It really gave them the inspiration to say, ‘Yeah, I think I can do that if I work hard.’ … It really made a huge impression on my daughters.”

The University High School girls volleyball program, led by varsity head coach Jared Rudiger, is an active, longtime participant in UNC’s summer camps.

This past summer, the Bulldogs sent four teams — about 50 total players, ranging from eighth graders to high school seniors — to the Bears’ volleyball team camp.

Rudiger also regularly organizes team outings to UNC’s volleyball matches during the fall when the Bulldogs can find a brief break from their own busy campaign.

Under Oates’ guidance, the Bears have routinely been one of the top contenders in the Big Sky Conference and have earned respect on a national level, regularly qualifying for the NCAA Division I national tournament.

Rudiger, who has coached for a variety of youth, high school and club programs in the area during his three-decade career, said having such a quality collegiate women’s volleyball program right in Greeley has helped raise the interest and caliber of play among young local athletes over the years.

“It gives them an opportunity to see what the highest level of a Division I athlete is,” said Rudiger, a UNC alum. “Also, it’s pretty neat that sometimes there are local athletes that make (the Bears’) program. Lyndsey does recruit locally, and she also brings in opponents that might have local kids on their team.”

Like Mattio and Smiley do with the basketball programs, Oates’ Bears volleyball program welcomes Greeley middle school and high schools teams to attend their matches for free, with those arrangements being made in advance of a match.

That’s just one way in which UNC’s athletic programs give back to the community.

Oates noted things like participation in Habitat for Humanity projects, Food Bank Day, an annual grass volleyball tournament at the Greeley Stampede, Santa Cops and trips to schools to read to children as other ways her athletes give back to the Greeley community.

In short, Oates and her UNC coaching contemporaries are constantly searching for ways they can expand their reach outside of the campus’s parameters and connect with Greeley residents all throughout the city.

It is what they want to.

It is what they need to.

Smiley emphasized that his and other UNC athletic programs have a responsibility to connect in a positive way with its surrounding community. The Bears’ athletic programs — like those of most major universities throughout the country — are, in many ways, the face of the campus, Smiley said.

Healthy Bears athletics can contribute to a healthy UNC. A healthy UNC can contribute to a healthy Greeley.

“If we’re going to have that visibility, we’ve got to really give back and help out,” Smiley said. “We want to feel connected to this place, and we take a lot of pride in it. There are so many ways to connect, and we try to use every channel and avenue we can so that people feel like they know who we are and feel like they know that we want to be a big piece of this community.”

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