More than 200 Vicksburg area children are getting lessons in sports and teamwork at the Bowmar Baptist Church Sports Camp.

Camp Director Jennifer Van Norman says the sports-themed religious camp came about in an effort to reach more youth in the community.

“It’s something that grew out of our Vacation Bible School and this is the third year we’ve done a sports camp with a Christian theme,” Van Norman said. “Vicksburg is such a great sports town that we thought this would be a great way to reach the community by incorporating sports with the bible,” she said.

The sports camp is divided into four segments. Youths are getting instruction in either baseball, softball, soccer or cheerleading.

“We felt fortunate that we were able to get some of the best coaches from the community,” Van Norman said. “Chris Busby is doing our baseball segment while Carlos Lee with the Kickz for Kidz is handling soccer. We also have Cherry Robbins doing the cheerleading camp.”

Busby, a local youth baseball coach in Vicksburg, said he was looking forward to working with about 50 campers.

“The church wanted to do something different than just a traditional bible study which is based in a classroom. By going with the sports thing, the numbers have gone up. It’s extremely popular with the kids,” Busby said. “We had 220 pre-register and another 75 came in today, so we’re close to 300,” Busby said. “We also have about 150 adult volunteers from the church to help us.”