POULSBO — While track and cross country running have been the focus of a week long camp at North Kitsap High School, local coach Greg Chapman feels the youths participating are getting a base in every sport.

“The big thing is that if you can learn how to run properly, there’s not a sport you can’t do,” said Chapman, the camp’s creator, who is in his seventh year of running the camp,

Nonetheless, the 63 youngsters on the NKHS track this week, ages 5 to 14, will certainly have a leg up on the competition by the time they hit junior high and high school.

From 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day, campers have delved into events like the triple jump, hurdles, turbo javelin, sprints and shot put, learning the basics and seeing from their young perspectives the highly individualistic events of track. That likely contrasts from the more prevalent baseball, basketball and soccer camps of which so many youths are accustomed.

Chapman is the Olympic High School track and field coach as well as the cross country coach. He also coaches the Thunderbolts, a Kitsap select track team, of which many of the counselors at camp, including NKHS 2005 graduate Ryan Young, were members.

“Chapman was really the first coach I had,” said Young, who won back-to-back state titles in the javelin and is on scholarship for track at the University of California at Berkeley. “He does a great job of making sure the kids get pushed but also have a lot of fun.”

Chapman began coaching soccer in 1980, but it wasn’t until 1996 when he was asked to be an assistant of the Olympic track team. He gradually worked his way into the head coaching position.

“It just sort of snowballed from there,” he said.

Chapman’s cadre of coaches includes successful athletes from across the county.

Kim Reiland, a Central Kitsap 2004 graduate and current athlete on the cross country and track teams at Moorehead State University in Kentucky, said she’s amazed at what the littlest of kids at camp can learn to do.

“They can do starts, which can be complicated to learn,” she said of the campers. “We’ve had 5-year-olds do them. And when they come back the next year, amazingly, they remember how.”

According to Caroline Johnson, who will be a senior at Bainbridge High School next year, the most crucial aspect to the camp is creating a desire to learn and compete.

“Establishing a love for (the sport) in the beginning is the most important part,” she said. “They can learn and get a taste for what they like and then can develop and choose what (events) they want to do.”

Most area athletes begin track and cross country at the junior high school level. The same holds true for Kim Skelly, a North Kitsap High School 2005 graduate, who will run track next year for Linfield College in Oregon. She felt starting track as an 8-year-old would have been a tremendous step up on the competition.

“These kids are able to triple jump at age 8, 9, 10,” Skelly said. “Learning the basics earlier is really helpful.”

Plus, Skelly said, as a camp counselor, she gets to teach what she loves and get a little help with what can be steep college bills.

“Now that I’m a starving college student, every penny counts,” she said.