Our Summer Camp:

[Cannonball]

I am posting a new concept on how we are doing our summer camp this year. Long story short, we had so many area TB programs want to have their own "team camp" that we did it. Several TB teams signed up for 2-hour slots. This was a great experience for these players. With the 2 hour session, one team hit for an hour with instruction while the other fielded for an hour and then we flip those teams. This was a 3-day camp. The goal for the program was to raise enough money to buy two new hitting nets for our cages. Our cages are 14 feet wide and 70 feet long. We have two of them and both have turf. With this setup, we were able to create 8 hitting stations with two stations having balls in flight. Of course, safety was a top priority. We started at 8:30 in the morning and we took a break at 2:30. Then, we began again from 5:00 until 8:00. We asked our HS players to volunteer for a 2-hour session and be there each day for that session. We are so blessed with the players we have. We are also blessed with our alumni who came to work the camp to help us get the new nets. We had so many former players show up. More than one or two took days off of work to show up. A couple came from work to do the session after 5:00. Our HS staff was there including the old guy (me) and I truly believe that these players received quality instruction and I know that they had fun. Several players asked us to do more of these team camps.

This change in format from our traditional fundamentals camp was a huge gamble. We had an 8U team, two 10U, 12U, and 14U teams commit to this camp. I believe that this format will reap great benefits for our high school and middle school programs.

Have any of your TB teams approached a HS staff for one of these types of camps? I do understand that on this site, HS coaches/programs are looked down on. Still, there have to be some areas left in this country where the HS program is viewed as positive.

 

[Dabears17]

I'm hoping to implement some sort of camp program hosted by my DD's high school summer 2022. Interesting concept to consider doing.

 

[Cannonball]

What we/I did was prepare a "cheat sheet" for some of the coaches and players on each of the drills and then we practiced with the coaches on how to demonstrate the drills. I wanted a conversation started with all of the players/hitters so that they could explain why they were doing drills.

We also made sure that safety was a priority. We discussed where players should stand, heat issues, and that when we said, "rotate," no one hits another ball.

I did my best to do the front toss station but, to be honest, I was our first victim of overheating. I had to sit down. On day 3 the other coaches made sure I had shade and that I was not to move from under the canopy. I guess I am getting older. I will have more to add but wanted to see if anyone else had comments. @Dabears17 , you'll do great with this. I would say this though. Call those teams who committed to make sure that they are really going to show up. We had a team not show up and had turned down several teams.