Weekend Clinic

This past Saturday, March 26, USA Baseball needed me to come to the National Training Complex in Cary to help put on a clinic for both coaches and players. When I arrived at the stadium I was introduced to the other interns that would be working for USA Baseball this summer and we were all given a nice USA fleece pull over jacket to keep. Thankfully they gave us those jackets because it was only 50 degrees out with a slight drizzle. The first part of the clinic which went from 9-12 was for coaches and from 1-4 the clinic was for the young players ages 6-12. During the coaches portion of the clinic I worked the pitching station. At this station my task was to act as a catcher for the staff coach to throw to as he instructed the coaches on proper pitching mechanics. Once the coach’s portion of the clinic was over the USA Baseball staff fed us lunch from Jersey Mike’s which was nice of them to do for us all. Soon before you knew it, all the little kids started to pile into the stadium preparing for a good time. During the players clinic I worked the home run derby section. Being that the players were so young, we set up a black fence with blank sponsor sign boards a short distance away so they could hit homeruns. Once the older age groups came around to our station we moved the fence line back to make it more difficult for them to hit home runs. As the players took turns batting I soft tossed to them and it was difficult to get a rhythm tossing or finding their strike zone since all the kids varied. In the end it was a great time working with the kids because they were all laughing and having a good time being out on the diamond. At times the staff got to do home run derby also to show off to the kids and impress them with how far we could hit the ball.