Even though the 2023-2024 season ended in February and the 2024-2025 season won’t start for five more months, that doesn’t mean that the Emery High School boy’s basketball team will be taking the summer off.

Emery ended the season in the sixth place game to Manti, after falling to eventual State Champion Judge Memorial in the quarterfinal round. The Spartans ended the season 20-7 overall and 10-4 in Region 12 play earning a second-place finish. With the off-season upon them, the team will spend time attending tournaments including the Utah Summer Games and camps throughout the state as well as hosting one that is coming up June 11-12.

Coach Dave Justice was a guest on KOAL’s Drive Time Sports recently and talked about what the offseason will hold for Spartan boys basketball.

“June is kind of a big basketball time actually, with camps and tournaments and open gyms and kind of excited to get some new guys in the gym, we lost a lot of seniors, but kind of get some of these juniors, sophomores and even the freshman coming in and playing some ball together, so yeah, it’s exciting.”

Just last weekend they participated in the Utah Summer Games, taking on different teams from around the state.

“It went really well, we kind of improved as the weekend went on. We saw a lot of really good competition like Union, Richfield, Hurricane, teams like Cedar City, and teams like that. It was a really good learning experience.”

The Spartans will attend the USU Eastern camp this weekend where they will face some tough competition as well.

“I love the USU camp for us, there’s a lot of good teams going, I know Carbon is going, and that’s actually I think our first game. Carbon, Union and we’ll see some even upper-class teams like Taylorsville and Tooele, so we’ll see some really good competition.”

The Emery Spartan basketball youth camp is coming up on June 11 & 12, and Coach Justice talked about the details.

“It’s always a really great time, we do a lot of fundamentals, and we end up playing a lot of games and a lot of tournament-style games, that makes it really fun for the kids. Our players do such a great job of hyping up the kids, and we’ve had some really fun awesome moments throughout our camps.”

The camp will take place starting on June 11  and 12 at 10:00 a.m. and will run through noon on both days. It is open to third to eighth-grade students and the cost is just $15 and includes a t-shirt.

If you are interested in enrolling your student you can email Coach Justice at davej@emeryschools.org, or call (435) 820-0642. You can also register the day of by coming 30 minutes early or using the QR code below.

The full interview with Coach Justice can be accessed using the player below: