Belchertown Baseball Youth Clinic

We had 26 of our 31 athletes in the program help out at our youth clinic. All of which were completely voluntary. I was honestly hoping to get about 10 to help, but the majority of both programs (Varsity and JV) committed to the event. We did two 1-hour sessions. The first was geared toward the older groups in the Little League program on our varsity 90 foot diamond, while the second session was geared toward the younger groups at our miniature Fenway Little League field in town. My players ran every station of the clinic on their own. They started by leading the same pre-practice warm-up that we do at the varsity and JV level and then led the participants through the same daily drills that we do at our varsity practices and rotated through the 7 stations every 6 minutes. In total we had a little over 60 Little League participants at the clinic.

This was something that we wanted to get going since I started here in 2020, but the pandemic really put the idea on hold for 2 years. Fast forward to April 23rd and the participation and support we received for doing this was tremendous. We really don’t look at it as community service, but more as a way to bridge the Little League program to the high school program and create excitement and build the culture of baseball in Belchertown. The entire Little League was excited to be able to work with the high school athletes and do the same kinds of things as them on the baseball field. We are hopefully planning to incorporate the Little League into a varsity home game and host a “Little League Night” before the end of the season. It’s really all about building the program from the bottom up and creating something for the kids and the town to be proud of right from the youngest age group all the way to our seniors who will graduate in June.