Serious business meets fun and games at annual camps
Fri, 2016-06-17 05:00
News Staff
By TJ MAXWELL
Cove Leader-Press
To be competitive in high school sports, you have to start young. For those young athletes, it’s the perfect time to reel them and blossom their love for the respective sport.
Summer camps offer an excellent way to introduce these young athletes to a sport or draw them in closer with fun and fundamentals.
For Copperas Cove head baseball coach Dusty Brittain a healthy mix of both is what’s needed to draw the kids in.
“That’s what we’re trying to do,” he said. “We want them to come to camp and have so much fun that next year the first thing they think is, ‘I can’t wait to go to baseball camp.’ I think if you start building that love of the game early, you make them addicted and you keep them all the way through.”
Brittain wants to leave the younger kids wanting more so he ends each year’s camp with a fun day where kids play games, have competitions and cool off from the heat of summer with a little fun in the water.
“The kids are having fun and that’s the big thing,” he said during Wednesday’s camps. “We’re trying to teach them fundamentals, but at the same time, make it fun and have a lot of competitions. Tomorrow, we’ll have games, competitions and the big Slip ‘N Slide and they always enjoy that.”
Brittains camp numbers aren’t growing but they’re not sliding either despite the humid, muggy conditions..
“It’s been a pretty good turnout,” he said. “It’s about the same…about 50 kids.”
For the older kids, it’s less about fun and more about fundamentals. Camps act as a valuable tool for coaches to evaluate junior high and incoming freshman players to help determine the direction of the program and get them prepared to play at the next level.
“We take our older kids basically through a high school practice,” said Brittain. “We do some fun stuff and competition but it is our first evaluation of incoming freshmen and 7th and 8th graders that are coming in.”
The camp is held during the Copperas Cove Parks and Recreation summer baseball league but Brittain encourages parents to not let their child miss out on the summer camps just because they play summer ball. He feels it’s important for the coaches and potential future players to get on the same page before their foray into high school ball and also feels anything that gets you out and active is a good thing.
“If your kid is going to play here in Copperas Cove it’s good for them to know our faces, get to see us and know we’re teaching things,” he said. “You don’t always hear the same things from different coaches. I think anytime your kid is out, active and playing it’s good for them. It’s hot out here but these kids can handle it. More importantly, it gets them playing with other kids and enjoying that time. That would be my big encouragement.”
He also gives a word of caution for those athletes that may not feel they need the camp. If a talented athlete is home playing video games or watching television while their less-talented competitor is working hard, he will likely take their spot.
“Kids that aren’t here are really missing out,” he said. “We have guys that are going to help us next year and future years so we treat those as practices and a way to be able to evaluate if they can help us – not only on sub-varsity, but can they help us on the varsity.”
Brittain knows first hand as he added two freshmen to the varsity squad last year in Colby Jost and Michael Goudeau and had a couple sophomores that were key contributors in Jaylen Smith and Cameron Johnson.