This week, the Boise Hawks hosted their annual baseball camp directed towards children ages 7-14.  The camp is two half-day sessions jam-packed with drills.  The kids had the chance to learn from Hawks players and Manager Casey Kopitzke (who is actually the first manager to take part in the yearly camp) while rotating from station to station, covering everything from base running to pitching.

Check out the montage of clips from the first day of camp here.

Besides the manager getting involved, there was also something new to the way the camp was run–on the baseball side.  Manager Casey Kopitzke did not assign guys to the camp but instead hung up a sign-up sheet so the guys could volunteer on their own.

“I think it’s best if the guys decide they want to do something like this on their own,” said Kopitzke.  “I want to make sure everyone has a good time…I don’t want to give a kid a bad experience because maybe the player didn’t want to be there.”

However, there was no shortage of interested players testing out their coaching skills.  On the first day of camp pitcher Corey Martin manned the station on throwing basics, pitcher Yohan Gonzalez and catcher Richard Jones worked with the kids in the batting cages, first baseman Justin Bour taught the kids some ground ball skills, pitcher Danny Keefe worked on fly balls and Kopitzke took over base running.  On the second day, outfielders Jose Valdez and Runey Davis worked in the cage, pitcher Ryan Sontag took over fly balls,  infielder Logan Watkins and Tarlandus Mitchell taught the kids double plays, Kopitzke taught a little bit of catching, and pitchers Jon Nagel and Yohan Gonzalez taught the kids a little bit of pitching.

After the sessions, the kids were able to eat lunch with the guys and get a few autographs.

By far, it has been one of my favorite events this season–it is so cool to see these guys work with the youngsters, and you know these kids are just in awe because they were able to play with professional baseball players.  So awesome!