Nine-year-old Khloe Zahn never played basketball before she signed up for the city's new six-week junior basketball camp.

Dressed in her blue-and-white city jersey on Saturday, she said she now thinks basketball is fun, and she is getting pretty good at it.

“I like to shoot the hoops,” Khloe said on Saturday at the gym of the President Gerald R. Ford Boys & Girls Club of La Quinta.

Khloe is one of at least 30 children ages 9 to 13 in the two-hour program, which is held Saturday mornings through Nov. 14.

The children stretch, learn skills like dribbling the ball and play games.

City officials had hoped to create a junior basketball league similar to its soccer and football leagues. However, not enough children had been signed up by the mid-September deadline, so the plan was changed.

“So, we turned it into a training camp for kids,” said Robert Ambriz, city recreation supervisor.

For two hours, the young players learn the game with camp counselors Phil Deruyter and Jeffrey Thomas, who is a Boys & Girls Club athletic director.

“When we started, a majority of the kids ages 8 to 11 had no idea how to dribble, but now they are doing it better,” Thomas said.

Brette Hospedales, whose 12-year-old son Cory is in the camp, said she appreciates the city's efforts.

“This has given him the opportunity to come out and play with other kids his age because there are not enough year-round opportunities here,” she said.

The basketball program will return again next fall, and Ambriz said he hopes there will be more children interested so the city can have a basketball league.

“If we could create some mini-stars, we did our job,” he said.