Kentucky MBB donates $40,000 toward tornado relief effort during satellite camp at North Laurel

Mark Pope, Otega Oweh, and members of the Kentucky men’s basketball team did more than just host a basketball camp on Friday in London, KY.

The Wildcats made their way down to Reed Sheppard Country — North Laurel High School — for the first of two satellite camps over the next 24 hours, the other happening on Saturday morning at Russell County High School. It was a usual camp experience for the young kids in attendance — Kentucky players running them through drills, sharing some advice, and easily blocking all of their layup attempts.

But the campers (and their parents watching from the side) were in for a surprise right before it was time to leave. A check for $40,000, presented by Otega Oweh and the rest of his Wildcat teammates, was made out to Southern Kentucky Tornado Relief as a donation from those within the program. The cities of London and Somerset, in particular, were heavily impacted by deadly tornadoes that ripped through the area last month.

And according to Pope, the decision to have this particular camp in Laurel County, accompanied by a donation, was player-led.

“The morning after the tornadoes hit, I reached out to Shep (Jeff Sheppard) with none of this in mind,” Pope said after the camp wrapped up. “And we had long conversations about what the community needed. And our guys, as we started to present a bunch of ideas, they’re like this is the one, let’s go do a camp down there and let’s go be there. And they just kept building it and building it until they were like, hey we want to actually make a real financial contribution.”

To wrap up today’s camp, Mark Pope, Otega Oweh, and Kentucky MBB present a check for $40,000 to go toward the tornado relief fund here in the Somerset/London area. pic.twitter.com/9TbDim5gjV

— Zack Geoghegan (@ZGeogheganKSR) June 20, 2025

It wasn’t just about the camp, though. Pope and the team spent nearly all of Friday in southern Kentucky helping people in need. After morning practice, they all piled into a bus and made the trip down I-75, heading straight to a church, Faith Assembly of God, where they met with roughly 250 tornado victims. From there, they went to help deliver furniture to another tornado victim before making it to the camp.

“We got to go around for a few hours just listening to them, hearing their stories,” Sophomore guard Collin Chandler said. “I think that was super important to them, is to have people that will listen to their stories and care about them. It was super inspiring for us as a team, I would say, to just see a community come together like that. People were so faithful even with the devastation that’s going on.”

Oweh talked about meeting with the church’s pastor, and how the pastor was telling him to “find some light in the negative stuff”. Despite having to face and overcome a natural disaster, the people of southern Kentucky are still coming together as they continue to rebuild what was lost.