Baseball camp takes swing at recruiting

The Bobcat baseball team is hosting the second Turn Two Baseball Camp this year to help recruit high school players and prospective GC&SU students.

Assistant Baseball Coach Tom Carty said the instructional and evaluative clinic helps to showcase both the university and GC&SU’s baseball program.

“I think for the college, any time you can have potential athletes on campus-that’s a good thing,” Carty said. “It’s a chance for them to see all that we have to offer.”

Head Coach Chris Calciano said the camp helps GC&SU’s coaching staff in the process of looking for prospective players.

“The main reason we do this is recruiting,” Calciano said. “It’s 40 to 50 high school baseball students that we get a chance to see and have on campus. We signed two players from last year’s camp who came on scholarship.”

Calciano said the camp serves not only as a learning tool for baseball skills, but also as an information session about college and recruiting.

“It offers the opportunity for instruction from college coaches and for (the high school players) to showcase their abilities,” Calciano said. “We also provide them information about the recruiting process and answer any questions they may have about the NCAA rules.”

Carty said the camp gives high school students a chance to gain a first-hand perspective on college life.

Carty said the experience is also one that provides an opportunity for current team members to volunteer and perhaps even enhance their own skills.

“I think sometimes when you’re teaching skills, you start learning even more yourself,” Carty said.

Calciano said the volunteer players also begin to remember where they came from as they work with the high school players.

“I think it’s good for players,” Calciano said. “It’s a good thing when you see the kids realize how fortunate they are to be a part of the program and I think they get to see that by witnessing the amount of kids who come to the clinic and the quality of those kids and how badly they want to be a part of this program.”

Right-handed pitcher Christian Castorri said he volunteered for the camp last year and is planning on volunteering again this year.

“(It allowed me to) look back and see how I was viewed as a high school player,” Castorri said. “It’s a good chance for them to see what college, the campus, college coaching and baseball in general is all about. We show them the formalities that we go through every day to stay healthy, perform better, and basically just improve.”

The Take Two Baseball Camp will focus on hitting, both outfield and infield play, catching and pitching.

The camp will be divided into a morning session for outfielders and infielders from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. with players reporting at 8:30 a.m. and an afternoon session for pitchers and catchers from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. with players reporting at 12:30 p.m.

Camp will be hosted at John Kurtz Field on West Campus Nov. 12. For more information, contact Brad Muller at (478) 445-1779.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Nov 11 2005. Filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry