Five young Arlington baseball players were recently selected to attend Cal Ripken Jr. baseball camp, to be held in Washington DC on Ripkens estate. The kids received grants from the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation which promotes youth baseball in America. Each child will get a receive instruction from nationally recognized coaches including Cal himself.
The Arlington boys selected were Brandon Allen, Kyle Studerus, Sevryn Modahl, Tanner Temple, and Timothy Duffy. They will all be flown to Aberdeen, MD for a three day camp August 22-24. The Snohomish County Boys and Girls Club was gifted $10,000 to be spent on the local youth baseball programs as well as baseball equipment as part of the grant. Because Arlington is the largest branch of the county Boys and Girls Club, they will receive a lions share of the money.
We picked kids who were baseball players and enjoy baseball, but we picked them because they were deserving of the trip for what theyve done for the Boys and Girls Club, said Kevin Coghill, the athletics director at the Arlington B&GC, These five kids are exceptional as far as having good values. They are just good kids.
As part of the grant, Coghill flew back to Cincinnati to receive special training from Cal and Billy Ripken.
We went to a program called Healthy Choices, Healthy Children, said Coghill, The Ripkens goal was to teach life lessons to young people. Over five hundred leaders attended the clinic in Cincinnati. As part of the grant, we each need to return to our communities and put 100 kids through the program this year.
Coghill will also fly to Aberdeen with his the boys to help chaperone the event. He will attend training sessions with other chaperones to make sure the kids are in the right place, but he will have no coaching duties. In the evenings, the camp schedules planned activities for the participants, so Coghill will again make sure that everything runs smoothly.
I admire the lessons that Cal taught at the coaching clinic. I used a lot of things they taught us in Cincinnati in my own practices. They gave us a big Cal Ripken coaches book which contained all types of drills and instructions. Im impressed with what he has done to promote baseball, promote good principles, and values to kids. Hes teaching baseball the right way. Teaching values along with the baseball instruction. Cal also de-emphasizes parents getting too involved, trying to make their kid the next professional player.
Coghill looks forward to the trip, calling it a once in a lifetime experience for the kids. While he will blend into the background at the camp itself, Coghill will gain more valuable knowledge on how to better coach young athletes in Arlington. The lessons learned will be applied to youth baseball here for many players to benefit from.