JR Camel swears it is true, so it certainly could be, as he seems to be in command of powers well beyond the customary human range.
His memory is clear, that at “3 or 4” years of age, he told his mother that he wanted to start competing with his older brothers, who already were training as boxers.
“I’ll never forget, my mom just told me, ‘well, as soon as you start, you’ll never stop,’ ” Camel said. “I thought, OK, let’s do it. I didn’t know it would start with 3-mile jogs every morning before we even got into our boxing training. But from Day 1, I was always competitive.”
And, living up to his mother’s prophesy, Camel has never stopped competing. In fact, he continues to find new outlets as he ages.
Now 51, with a string of Hoopfest successes, Camel this week is adding a Hooptown USA Hall of Fame induction to his gaudy athletic resume.
“I was excited when I heard about (the induction),” Camel said. “I’ve been going to Hoopfest for 20-25 years, won it three times in a row, and took second probably six times. So, just to be recognized like this is a big accomplishment.”
A few other impressive items in his bio: Montana Indian Athletic Hall of Fame, Class AA State Basketball Championship at Missoula Hellgate, Gatorade Montana Player of the Year, All-Big Sky first team (twice), University of Montana career steals record holder for 20 years.
Oh, and now, branching out to masters track competition, he won a silver medal in the National Indoor Seniors meet in the pentathlon. And in the Montana Senior Olympics last summer, his five gold medals included a world-leading time of 6.04 in the 50 meters.
“He’s definitely one of the greatest of all the players I’ve ever played with, including NBA players,” said fellow Hooptown Hall-of-Famer Shann Ferch, Gonzaga professor and long-time coach, teammate and opponent of Camel’s on the basketball court. “He’s among the most well-rounded, smartest, and offensively and defensively profound player I’ve ever seen.”
The use of “profound” as an adjective modifying an athlete is unusual, but spot-on with Camel. Very great or intense … having great knowledge or insight. Camel fits both uses.
So, it’s fair to call him a legend?
Ferch: “Absolutely.”
• • •
When Camel’s family moved from Homedale, Idaho to Ronan, Montana, he was disappointed that they had no boxing programs. “I was in sixth grade, I didn’t know anything about basketball. I tried it. By seventh grade I wasn’t that good, but in eighth grade, I started dunking, and it went wild from there. I was always running and jumping, and I always had good balance from all the boxing and rope-jumping.”
Boxing was in his blood. His half-brother, Marvin Camel, was a two-time cruiserweight world champ, and the first Native American to hold a major boxing title.
JR Camel attributes his boxing background – and thousands of hours on the speed-bag – for his quick hands, which allowed him to come up with 90 steals one season at the University of Montana.
The rich connection of tribal life and basketball, Camel said, probably goes back to “the game, shinny, kind of like lacrosse, a lot of running and bumping and using your athletic ability.”
Since basketball requires only a ball and rim, it was one thing that was always available.
“With Native Americans, on the reservations, there’s always an outdoor hoop. From Day 1, a lot of natives have been playing basketball. They get it passed down from their uncles and their parents for generations.”
To challenge himself against better competition, he transferred from his local school, St. Ignatius, to Missoula Hellgate as a senior.
Camel said that small-town stars with Division I aspirations are often discouraged, with doubters warning: “You’re just going to come back to the reservation.”
Much of Camel’s successful transition to the University of Montana was made easier by visits to see his older brother Zach, then attending school there.
“He would bring me up on weekends and I’d come up and stay and get comfortable with Missoula,” JR Camel said.
Those visits always included open-gym basketball games that sometimes included current Grizzly players. By the time Camel was a junior in high school, “I was thinking, I’m right there with them,” he said. “I could really run and fly and dunk. It was something that excited me, seeing where I was going and what I could be.”
Camel dreamed it into reality.
His junior season, 1997-98, he was ranked fourth in NCAA basketball in steals per game at 3.1.
Listed as a 6-foot-2 point guard, Camel was a pass-first ballhandler. “Defense and teamwork, passing the ball, getting other people open. I used to be young and like to score 50 points a game, but I came to the realization that if I score 50 and the other team scores 80, we lose. I love winning and it’s always better to win as a team.”
After a few years playing internationally, Camel returned to Ronan, to get into coaching and playing in every tournament he could find.
• • •
Shann Ferch had just started to comment about the skills of his old friend Camel when he had to stop to remark on a rare occurrence.
“Oh, hey, an eagle just flew over Deer Lake,” Ferch said. “JR must have sent it.”
On top of being an educator and chronicler of Montana basketball lore, Ferch is an author and poet, which makes him open to imagining a symbolic connection between a rare eagle sighting and his analysis of a Native American man he greatly respects and admires.
On the list of gifted tribal hoopers rising from Montana courts, Camel “is at the very top,” Ferch said. “He was a huge, huge groundbreaker.”
Camel’s competitiveness, Ferch said, “Is way, way up there. Then, he can really score, and that piece of it is subtle, if you’ve never played against him, he can totally turn that on and off, because he’s such a total team person.”
Ferch recalled coaching Camel’s high school team at an NBC camp, and in each game, every half dozen or so times down the floor, he called for the alley-oop to Camel. “You could throw the ball to the sky and he will dunk it on anybody. He really can soar.”
Ah, yes, like an eagle over Deer Lake.
Even well into his late 40s and early 50s, Camel can still astound Hoopfest fans.
Ferch recalled a single play that illustrates Camel’s hoops virtuosity. After teammate Alan Spoonhunter bounced a fall-away jumper off the rim in the final moments of a tight game, Ferch watched Camel race after the rebound, leaping over the boundary, and without turning or landing, fire the ball back over his head, precisely into the hands of a wide-open Spoonhunter for the game-winning shot.
As described, it seemed the result of exceptional athleticism, sure, but even more, some kind of extra-sensory connection with a teammate.
Profound, right?
If there are doubts if he can still be a force on the Spokane pavement, last year, at 50, his Desert Horse Elite team lost a key teammate to injury, but with Camel and “a couple high school sophomores,” they made it all the way to the semifinals of the 6-foot-and-under elite.
“It was exciting, some life lessons for those kids,” Camel said. “They were nervous, but I said, I’m crazy and wild enough to want to make a run at it if you guys are willing to follow me. They said, ‘we’re ready’ and we made a run.”
• • •
Track and field had only been a diversion, never a focus. But when Ferch said he could soar, Camel’s best of 6-foot-10 in the high jump, and 48 feet in the triple jump bear evidence.
“Masters track and field is so exciting,” he said. “It’s so funny, everybody is so nice. Basketball and boxing are so competitive, but I went to a track meet and everybody is pulling for everybody else. I loved it.”
A member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, Camel works as a trainer on their reservation. “I get to see a lot of kids who are up and coming,” he said. “I get to work with them and talk to them and try to mentor them. A lot of them have goals, they want to go to college. I try to get them to follow their goals and try to help as many as I can.”
His main message to them is told by the events of his own life.
“I always say, this is the way: Live in the moment, win the moment, and enjoy the moment,” he said. “Win your life as a husband, as a parent, as someone who can become a mentor. Always try to be an example. To do the right thing, to live the right way, understanding that we’re not guaranteed many moments in life.”
Camel thinks some people show up to Hoopfest to see how much he has left – or lost.
“People say I motivate them. Well, I’m trying my hardest and I’ll keep representing as long as I can.”
After fathering five daughters, Camel finally welcomed his first son, Henry William Camel III, last year. At 50.
“That’s my goal now; I want to make it 18 more years so I can walk with him on senior night when he graduates,” Camel said.
But wait, wouldn’t it be a more fitting goal to keep playing and win a Hoopfest title with him? You’ll only be in your 70s.
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “That’s it. I like that idea.”