TORRINGTON – Forty aspiring baseball players showed up on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving for a holiday baseball camp, held at the Goshen County School District Central Administration gym.
The camp featured several high-level coaches and players from the University of Northern Colorado, including head coach Carl Iwasaki, assistant coach Pat Jolley and Gering, Neb. native Eric Moreno.
“To bring in that level of coaching to our program is huge, not only for player development but keeping the buzz going for baseball in Torrington,” Torrington Little League President Abe Correa said. “We don’t want it to end in July and not pick it back up in March. We want to keep it fresh in the kiddos minds and hearts.”
Correa and his son Mateo attend camps at UNC all winter long for hitting, pitching, catching and fielding.
That connection and the fact Iwasaki has ties to the area, as his wife is from Morrill, Neb., brought the UNC coaching staff to Torrington.
“He wanted to offer his coaching staff to come up,” Correa said. “At the end, they offered to come back and work with our kids again.”
The camp officially kicked off winter workouts for the Little League program, leading up to Spring Training.
“Bethel Baptist Church, for the last two or three years, have allowed us the use of their gym,” Correa said. “That’ll be every Sunday all winter long.”
The winter workouts allow the kids to continue playing their normal winter sports of basketball and wrestling while still getting some swings in, take some fielding, along with pitching and catching.
“We try to mix it up week to week,” Correa said. “We try to end it with some sort of fun game.”
Winter workouts begin this coming Sunday, Dec. 8 at 3 p.m.
“We are going to do it a little different this year. We want them to online register, so we know our numbers a little better,” Correa said. “If we get a ton of interest in it, we’ll spit it up into two sessions with the t-ball and minors teams going at 3 p.m. and our major’s kids going at probably 4:30 p.m.”
Interested players can sign up at https://tshq.bluesombrero.com/torringtonll
At the end of the day, Correa hopes this is just another step to revitalizing baseball in Torrington.
“We just want to continue to promote baseball in town,” Correa said. “If we continue to have strong Little League numbers, that will hopefully push those kiddos on to play at the junior Legion and Legion levels, keeping baseball strong here in Torrington.”
