Reebok ABCD Invites Announced

It’s almost that time of year again, time for sneaker guru Sonny Vaccaro’s one-stop basketball recruiting shop known as the Reebok ABCD Camp at Fairleigh Dickinson. The Herald News breaks a list of New Jersey players invited to the prestigious camp between July 5-July 9. They include Paterson’s Travon Woodall, a 6-foot sophomore guard from St. Anthony whom the HN featured earlier this season.

Also invited were Corey Chandler of Newark East Side, a junior point guard who committed to Rutgers beginning in 2007; Corey Stokes, the St. Benedict’s junior swingman who recently committed to Villanova; Idris Hilliard, a junior from The Hun School in Princeton, and Ashton Gibbs, a sophomore from Seton Hall Prep.

That group will join O.J. Mayo and Kevin Love, the top two recruits in the Class of 2007, as well as Mayo’s North College Hill teammate Bill Walker, at FDU, where they will be examined and dissected by hundreds of college coaches and scouts from across this great land.

The 6-4, 190-pound Mayo has been associated with Reebok since 2003 when the shoe company invested tens of thousands of dollars in his AAU team, the D-I Greyhounds. But Mayo made national headlines in April when he played for the Nike-sponsored Miami Tropics in Houston, spurring some to speculate that the swoosh might have an inside track on signing the future NBA player to a multi-million dollar sneaker contract.
After all, LeBron James, to whom Mayo has most frequently been compared, jumped ship from adidas to Nike after announcing he would turn pro.

Still, Mayo has apparently left his options open and said he was looking forward to returning to ABCD for another season.
“It’s my last year coming so I’m looking forward to making a big impact and having some fun,” Mayo said during a phone interview.

Mayo also recently made national news when he was suspended from his North College Hill team for allegedly fighting. There had been speculation that he might transfer to another high school for his senior season. He visited with officials at Oak Hill Academy in Virginia, but Mayo said he would spend his last year at North College Hill in Cincinnati.
“I’ll be returning back to North College Hill,” he said.

Mayo is trying to win his third state championship at North College Hill.

Two other Paterson players, sophomore Jordan Theodore of Paterson Catholic and freshman Tamir Jackson of St. Benedict’s, were invited to this weekend’s Reebok Camp Next, also at FDU.