AU Pro Basketball's Deja Kelly Mentors Nashville Youth at Skills Camp
Deja Kelly may be in the midst of her debut Athletes Unlimited Pro Basketball season in Nashville, but her busy playing schedule didn’t stop her from connecting with youth basketball players in the city. On Sunday, the rookie guard hosted a camp for Nashville youth to develop skills and learn the ins and outs of basketball careers in college and beyond.
The camp served 35 young athletes from first through eighth grade and featured station work, competition drills, one-on-one matchups against Kelly, and a Q&A session with AU Pro Basketball players-turned-broadcaster and hosts, Sydney Colson and Theresa Plaisance.
For Kelly, hosting the camp was about more than just basketball fundamentals.
“I thought it was really important to try to tap into the Nashville community, just because they poured so much into AU Basketball, just in the past, with last year and then obviously this year,” Kelly said. “I try to do an annual camp. I usually have the Deja Kelly camp–I’ve had it in Dallas, and I’ve had it in Chapel Hill–and I wasn’t able to have one last year, so I was trying to figure out a way to incorporate that again. I thought, what better place than to do it here?”
Kelly partnered with ProCamps to organize the event, and Athletes Unlimited provided gym space and support to make it happen.
“AU was so helpful, just providing the gym space and just providing any help. I’m appreciative of that,” she said. “I love to give back. I love to try to have as many camps as I can. But I’m happy that I was finally able to put one together after taking a year off.”
The camp format included drills, station work, competition, and gameplay, with participants split into younger and older groups to ensure age-appropriate instruction. But Kelly’s focus extended beyond the court.
“My biggest emphasis on my camps, especially the ones I’ve had in the past, is teaching about more than just basketball, so teaching about life skills,” Kelly explained. “For the older ones, the high school kids, I have financial planning, NIL, social media branding–all the things that I had to learn and was going through from high school leading into college. And then for the younger ones, it’s just about having fun, just trying to see basketball as something that you like, just trying to provide a fun space for them to be in.”
Kelly credits her own experiences attending camps as a young athlete for inspiring her commitment to giving back.
“When I was super young, I was going to a lot of camps. I was trying to go to as many camps as I could. I could learn something different from each one and take something away from each one,” she said. “I remember those camps still to this day, so I just want to give them an opportunity to remember it for a long time.”
Siera Jones is the digital media reporter at Athletes Unlimited. You can follow her on Instagram and X @sieraajones.
