Shane Hackney, who wrote the book on deep snapping, brought his expert knowledge of snapping instruction to the area earlier this summer for two his SnapDoctor Snapping Camps.

The first camp was held at Lemont, while the second — a college invitational — took place at Berens Park in Elmhurst.

The one in Lemont, like numerous others throughout the country, is for players to become better long snappers. The main goal for Hackney is to get players to college. The past several years he and his staff have helped 25 players each season go on to play at college, with a few of those making it to the professional level.

In Elmhurst, the college invite is for elite athletes to have a more advanced and sophisticated curriculum.

Hackney is a high energy guy who brings tremendous amount of enthusiasm to his two-day camps.

Q What is a Shane Hackney SnapDoctor Snapping Camp?
A We’re all about long-snapping skills from punts to field goals and we’re kind of the world’s expert in that I would say. There are two schools of thought. One school is there is one right way to do everything and it has to be such and such and such, and we’re really not that school. For us it really comes down to four fundamentals (optimizing the stance, directionality of motion, efficiency and power) that we think apply to everybody and if we get that right with every snapper most of the other stuff falls into place.

Q What are the benefits?
A Part of what we do is we try to help these kids find their way to college. There are programs that are out there that charge money to do things like that and we’re not about that. If they pay the money to come to camp, we’re going to help them out. Every one of my coaches has played at the college level or better. It’s important to us to reach down that ladder and try to help other people climb up, live their dreams and get an education and live out all the fun that’s going on.

Q Why should someone come out to one of your snap camps?
A I’m biased. I think we do the greatest instruction in the world. The example I hold out there are the results that we get. Every year we’re helping to put about 25 kids into college. That’s probably out of high school age kids, we are training 150. Out of that probably 60-80 are seniors and we’re placing 25 of those kids in college.

Q What does the future hold?
A My ambition with my coaches and what I’d really like to do is get them to develop camps in places I can’t get to. The five-year plan is to have 25-50 camps across the country and reaching almost 1,000 kids. At that point I think we’ll have the potential to place 100-150 kids into college and at that point we’ll really be having an impact.

Q This is the first camp in the Chicagoland area held in Lemont (formally held in Elmhurst). Why the decision to come to Lemont?
A For a variety of reasons we decided to move to Lemont this year, to a new location and start building up the camp again. ... Our goal is to make this our home base in the Chicago area and come back year after year and build this up to a real successful camp where we’re reaching 20-25 snappers a year.

Q What is the difference with the college invite?
A First of all it’s an invitational camp and second of all it’s an exclusive camp for college-level athletes. What we try to do is look far and wide across the country and try to identify the most talented, absolute best long snappers from coast to coast. We invite those people to come to this camp where we focus on a more advanced curriculum, giving them the skills to excel and exceed at the college level and beyond.

Q How do players get invited to the camps?
A We send out letters to all the colleges around January/February telling them about the camp, encouraging the coaches to have their snappers apply. The snappers go through an application process ... and we go through all of that screening process and try to bring in 30-40 snappers each year.