MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – On Tuesday, West Virginia University announced that it is lifting some of its coronavirus restrictions in outdoor venues for fully vaccinated individuals in a sign that things are beginning to return to normal.
 
Another sign? Youth sports campers are about to return to campus.
 
Beginning June 1 and continuing throughout the summer, West Virginia University will offer almost 40 different camps in nearly all sports.
 
In a typical year, before COVID-19 shut down the country last spring, WVU averaged more than 3,000 campers per year. Most of those kids won't play for the Mountaineers, but they might one day end up choosing to attend West Virginia University as a regular student as I once did three decades ago.
 
My first introduction to the Towers dormitories and West Virginia's two campuses occurred in the early 1980s when I participated in the Gale Catlett Mountaineer Boys Basketball Camp.
 
Football and men's basketball combined account for more than half of the campers who come to Morgantown each summer, with Neal Brown's football program attracting approximately 860 campers during his first summer at West Virginia in 2019.
 
Brown is once again offering a full slate of football camps this summer, beginning next Tuesday, June 1 with the Mountaineer Made Camp.
 
There will be eight more camps over a three-week period, wrapping up with a seven-on-seven camp on Wednesday, June 23. These camps are taking on added importance this year because it will be the first time West Virginia coaches will be seeing potential football prospects in-person during this recruiting cycle.
 
"Coach Brown has always been really big on seeing guys live and the pandemic kind of put a wrinkle into that last summer," Coleman Barnes, football's associate athletic director for external affairs, said earlier this week. Among Barnes' many duties is overseeing Mountaineer football's nine different camps. "June 1 is the first day kids are allowed to come on campus, and we are really excited about that.
 
"A lot of kids we've recruited will be coming on campus in June, and there will be some kids we don't know a lot about that will get an opportunity to come out and showcase their talents as well," Barnes added.
 
Camps are not just for football prospects, either. June 16-17 is the Future Mountaineer Youth/Middle School Camp for youngsters, and in late July, before the team begins preseason work, a Fantasy Camp is being offered July 22-23.
 
"We're approaching 100 kids for our first camp and our youth camp recently surpassed 200 pre-registered, so we're excited about that," Barnes said. "In addition to those, we've got a specialist camp (June 13) and we've got about 30 kids registered for that so far."
 
According to men's basketball director of operations Josh Eilert, its overnight camp has been eliminated for this year but another day camp has been added. It is also adding a sports performance camp with strength and conditioning coach Shaun Brown offering his expertise, so men's basketball will actually have one more camp than usual.
 
The June 18-20 team camp is for potential basketball prospects, but Eilert indicated that they will have to limit the number of teams they can bring in this year because of the continued unavailability of the Rec Center this summer.
 
"We're short on courts," Eilert said. "We will have the basketball practice facility and the WVU Coliseum, giving us five courts to use."
 
Eilert said the popular Bob Huggins Fantasy Camp has been moved to the weekend of Sept. 25 when the football team is playing at Oklahoma.
 
"I just wanted to make sure we had enough time with the virus situation," Eilert explained.
 
In a normal year, men's basketball brings in approximately 700 campers to Morgantown, with more than half of those day and individual campers. Eilert said the numbers are beginning to pick up with roughly two weeks to go before its Father/Son Camp tips things off on Saturday, June 12.
 
Men's basketball's day camp is two days later with team camp starting June 18. The staff will hit the pause button on camps at the beginning of July when coaches are permitted to go out and recruit but will resume in early August with day camp for 8- through 14-year-olds.
 
"We've just started hitting social media this week, so it's still too early to tell what our numbers are going to look like," Eilert said.
 
Women's basketball decided to eliminate its overnight and team camps this year, offering just one day camp June 21-23 for K through seventh graders and 5- and 6-year-old boys.
 
"A lot of coaches have called us about team camp and we could have gotten our normal number of teams this year, but without having them overnight in the dorms and not playing in the Rec Center we just didn't think the quality was there to do it this year," Meghan Bielich, women's basketball director of operations and assistant to the head coach, said.
 
She indicated they are permitted to have a maximum of 120 campers on the two courts in the basketball practice facility and the main court in the WVU Coliseum this year.
 
"We're open, and we want to have as many kids here as possible," she said. "We're looking forward to it, and it will be our coaches and our players working with them, so we're excited to get everybody back and re-introduce our players to everybody."
 
Baseball is offering seven different camps, beginning June 7; men's and women's soccer have two each starting June 7 and wrestling has four camps beginning on June 20.
 
Volleyball camps start July 8 and continue through July 21, while gymnastics will have two different day camp offerings in mid-July.
 
You can log on to wvucamps.com to learn more about individual camp offerings, dates and prices. 
 
Football has its own camp website and it can be accessed by logging on to wvufootballcamps.com.