Ed Beyer's grandsons start up basketball camp in memory of North Dakota coaching legend's long-time camp

Jul. 11—HILLSBORO, N.D. — The Red River Valley Basketball Camp, run by legendary Hillsboro basketball coach Ed Beyer, was a staple in the area for decades through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s.

Hosted at Mayville State, the week-long camp brought hundreds of athletes together to learn and play.

By the mid-2000s, as the late Beyer stepped away from the camp, the Red River Valley Basketball Camp eventually dissolved and became a team camp.

Five years ago, Beyer's grandsons and son-in-law — an accomplished basketball family in their own right — had an idea to recreate grandpa's camp, an annual summer event — that started in 1982 — of which they shared fond memories.

So Craig Nelson, Brad Nelson and their dad Dave Nelson started the Love of the Game camp in 2019. The camp has grown from 150 campers in Year 1 to 625 this summer.

"(Beyer) gave us a blueprint of what a really good camp looks like," said Craig Nelson, a two-time (2003, 2002) North Dakota Class B all-state basketball player at May-Port-C-G. "He showed me what a fun and good camp looks like. We had that blueprint to be able to take and do something with. To see a lot of parents come to (our camp), sending their kids or stopping by after, and saying I remember (Beyer's) camp ... there's those memories and relationships."

Beyer coached the Hillsboro boys basketball team for 37 years, retiring after the 1997 season. He had a 688-195 won-loss mark at Hillsboro, a state record for boys basketball coaching wins when he retired.

Craig, who was a North Dakota Mr. Basketball finalist in 2003 and later played at Northern State, now coaches high school basketball in the Sioux Falls area.

His dad, Dave Nelson, was a first team all-state selection in 1977 for Hillsboro. After a lengthy coaching stint at Ashby, Minn., Nelson coached nine years at May-Port-C-G, where he took teams to five Class B state tournaments and won two B boys state championships.

"When my oldest son (Brad) moved back from California, the boys started talking about how neat it would be to somewhat model a camp after the camp grandpa started," said Dave, who helped Beyer with the Red River Valley Camp for nearly 20 years. "That talking wound up with us putting together a camp. We use both gyms in Hillsboro and both gyms in Central Valley. The first couple of years the numbers were such we only needed a couple of gyms. As word got out what kind of camp we were running and how we were running it, the numbers grew the last three, four years."

As summer basketball trends moved toward players attending team camps or strictly playing in games, the Nelsons wanted to stand out by focusing on skill development and instruction.

"We felt less and less kids were going to individual camps," Dave said. "They weren't getting solid fundamentals taught to them and getting that experience of learning the game through direct instruction ... the finer aspects of the game.

"We're sticklers for the fundamentals. Some of the other things we focus on are team skills and how to be a good teammate and how to handle adversity and be coachable. Those are stressed strongly during our camp. We not only want you to be a better basketball player but a better person and teammate, as well."

Before the Love of the Game camp started, Craig was traveling the camp circuit for years as a coach, but he wanted to put his stamp on a camp gameplan.

"I wanted the curriculum fun and fundamental based," Craig said. "It's in the name. The Love of the Game. We need to laugh, giggle and smile and make sure kids are loving this thing."

The growth of the camp has been a grassroots effort.

"When we started, we'd get Hillsboro kids, Central Valley, May-Port, Hatton-Northwood," Dave said. "It was pretty local, small schools. We'd use Facebook to get the word out and coaches to encourage kids. Now, it's more word of mouth. We'll get kids from Fargo, Grand Forks and more and more are coming from Minnesota. It's slowly grown and developed, and it's important to us to have coaches actually coach."

As the camp has grown, so has the coaching staff.

"Us three can't run a very good camp all by ourselves," Craig said. "We bring in 20-30 coaches. I brought up coaches from Sioux Falls this year. They can't believe the relationships that are built with some of these Class B towns."