FOSTER WONDERS

KINGSFORD — For the third consecutive summer, Jamie Angeli’s Basketball Camp of Champs makes its return to Dickinson County. The 2026 camp will be held at the Kingsford High School and Middle School gymnasiums.

The sessions for boys and girls in grades 3-8 will be held July 7-10, while campers in grades 9-12 will participate July 13-15. The grades listed are for 2026-27 school year.

Sessions for boys in grades 3-8 will from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. The gym will open at 9 a.m. For girls in grades 3-8, the times are from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. and the gym will open at 1 p.m.

For boys and girls in grades 9-12, the July 13-15 sessions will be from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and the gym opens at 9 a.m.

For a $100 entry fee, each camper will receive a camp T-shirt and camp basketball. There will be an opportunity to compete for 3 on 3 Pass, Cut and Finish Championship T-shirts and there will be a Camp of Champs shooting trophy for each grade level.

Lastly, something that is emphasized throughout camp is best attitude. The Attitude Still Matters Best Attitude Award for each division will be awarded. At the end of each camp, there’s the viewing of the always popular camp highlight video before the awards ceremony on the last day of camp.

Angeli, an Iron River native and West Iron County High School Class of 1980 alum, embarked on an over 40-year coaching career after playing college basketball at the University of Wisconsin-Stout. A Upper Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame inductee in 2025, Angeli expressed his excitement for the camp to return to Kingsford High School for the first time in over 30 years.

“There’s something powerful about returning to the place that helped shape a coaching career more than 40 years ago. Kingsford High School will always hold a special place because it’s where my passion for teaching the game truly started. To now bring the camp back there feels like the story has come full circle,” said Angeli. “Coaching has always been about relationships. Some former campers are now bringing their own children to camp, and that’s one of the greatest compliments imaginable.”

A recent commitment from a local and U.P. hoops legend to appear at this year’s Camp of Champs adds a lot of excitement. Iron Mountain High School graduate Foster Wonders will be a guest speaker on July 9 at both 12:30 and 2 p.m. to all campers in grades 3-8.

Angeli expressed that the public is welcome and encouraged to attend either of Wonders’ speaking engagements.

“I plan to tell the campers about my basketball journey, from here in our area all the way through until March of this year at Cleveland State,” Wonders said on Sunday.

Wonders, a three-time U.P. Mr. Basketball award winner by the Upper Peninsula Sportswriters and Sportscasters Association, is the Upper Peninsula’s all-time leading scorer with 2,286 career points. In 2021, Wonders was runner-up in the voting for the Hal Schram Michigan’s Mr. Basketball award, presented by the Basketball Coaches of Michigan to Pierre Brooks II of Detroit Douglass High School.

During Wonders’ stellar four-year career at Iron Mountain, the Mountaineers compiled an 83-5 record with MHSAA Division 3 state championship game appearances in 2019 and 2021.

Wonders played Division I college basketball at Southern Illinois, the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay and most recently in the 2025-26 season for Cleveland State University.

An exclusive feature to the Camp of Champs since it was restarted in 2024 at Norway-Vulcan Area Schools is Angeli’s relationship with the makers of Pop-A-Shot.

Throughout the week, all campers in all sessions will battle for the highest score in a fast-paced Pop-A-Shot shooting competition that brings energy, excitement, and nonstop cheering to camp every single day.

The top shooter in each division will win their very own Pop-A-Shot machine to take home with them upon completion of camp. It’s a one-of-a-kind feature found nowhere else in the U.P., and quite possibly nowhere else in the country.

Sponsors for the 2026 Camp of Champs are Kleiman Pump & Well Drilling, Coleman Engineering, Domino’s Pizza, First National Bank & Trust, Paul J. Fornetti Dentistry as well as Antonio’s of Iron Mountain, Bink’s Coca-Cola of Escanaba and Iron Mountain and Ride North, Back In Motion Physical Therapy and MBM Construction of Kingsford.

Additional sponsors are Scrubbing Bubbles Carwash & Storage of Norway, The Jeffrey John Company of Vulcan, Town & Country Sales of Quinnesec, Krist Oil Inc. of Iron River and Steve Anderson Forest Products of Felch.

Riverside Pizzeria of Iron River and Green Bay, Wis., U.P. Sports Talk and 906 Tech Express of Escanaba. First Bank of Upper Michigan, Pit Stop Bar & Grill of Niagara, Wis. are other camp sponsors.

The sponsor list also includes Norway native and Norway High School alum Jim Bouchard and the U.S Army as well as Kingsford alum Jeff Moore and the Institute of Clinical Excellence of South Carolina, and Kingsford High School alum Don Carlson and his non-profit It’s Gotta Be Shoes.

To register a camper or for more information on the camp itself, go to virtualbasketball coach.com.