Ashley Vansant/Reporter Sports Editor

Former UAB athlete and Calera native Byron De’Vinner is back at … giving back.

De’Vinner organized a free sports camp at Calera this spring to give local kids a chance to meet and learn from former athletes at Alabama, Auburn and UAB.

In late May, he held a charity softball game to coincide with a scholarship he began for deserving students at Calera Middle/High School.

Former Alabama athletes like Antonio Langham, Joey Jones and Jeremiah Castille competed against De’Vinner and other former UAB Blazers at the event.

Now De’Vinner has turned his attention to another south Shelby County school that could use a little help with funding.

He has spent the past few weeks helping organize the De’Vinner Foundation Yellow Jacket Celebrity Basketball Game to benefit Vincent Middle/High School.

The game will be held Friday Aug. 19 at 7 p.m. in the Vincent High gymnasium.

Admission is set for $5 with free admission for children pre-school age and younger.

Expected former UAB and Alabama athletes like Dr/ Fulgham, Bobby Humphrey, Antonio Langham, Sam Shade, Andrew Zow and others will square off against the Vincent faculty and alumni (including Shamar Abrams).

Shelby County prep kickers Jordan Means and Ryan Shoemaker continue to dominate summer kicking camps.

Shoemaker, a senior at Oak Mountain, began his summer winning the distance and hangtime competition at Alabama’s Tiffin/Pope kicking camp.

He also took top honors as the No. 1 senior punter at Auburn’s kicking camp .

Shoemaker most recently swept the competition at Ray Guy’s Kicking Academy in Hattiesburg, Miss., where he won the distance competition with an average of 48.6 yards per punt, the hangtime competition with a 4.6 second hangtime and the accuracy competition by placing a punt out of bounds at the six-inch line from 50 yards out.

Means, a junior at Pelham, has also cleaned up at this summer’s kicking camps.

He won the field goal competition at the Ray Guy camp by nailing a 60-yarder.

Means, who former Panthers’ coach Sammy Queen described last year as having possible NFL-type potential, showed off his leg in Pelham’s spring game with a 56-yard field goal.

He also won field goal competitions at the Tiffin/Pope camp and at the Auburn camp.

A third former athlete from the University of Montevallo has received an NCAA Division II Degree-Completion Award.

Chelsea’s Shea Panter, a former women’s basketball player at UM, was selected to receive a $5,000 award to complete her degree.

Panter was a four-year letterwinner for the Lady Falcons and was third on the team in scoring and second in rebounding last season.

She averaged 10.4 points and 5.1 rebounds per game and is on track to graduate with a degree in kinesiology this winter.

Panter is the third Lady Falcon in the past two years to receive the award, which is given to deserving student-athletes that have run out of athletic eligibility.

Ashley Vansant is the sports editor at the Shelby County Reporter. He can be reached at mailto:ashley.vansant@shelbycountyreporter.com