Chippewas host holiday baseball camp
About 200 high school baseball players flocked to the Indoor Athletic Complex at Central Michigan for the Holiday Combo Baseball Camp.
The camp gave the opportunity to the young athletes to not only learn the fundamentals from a Division one program but meet the current and former Chippewas.
“We are trying to educate them about the recruiting process and we also want to teach,” said head coach Steve Jaksa. “We’re teachers and we teach the game and everybody learns something one way or another.”
The camp is separated into two sessions with the first session focusing on pitching and catching while the second focusing on hitting, base running and fielding.
“We covered everything from their pop-time to their receiving and pitchers their base moving to arm care,” Jaksa said. “In the afternoon we’ll do every hitting drill from machines to live, and we’ll work on defense with middle guys working on double plays and corners doing corner work.”
Of the former players returning to help the camp five are still playing whether they are in the rookie league or in the majors.
The players who returned were catcher Dale Cornstubble in the rookie league for the Kansas City Royals, pitcher Jesse Hernandez in single-A short season with the Toronto Blue Jays, pitcher Jake Sabol in the rookie league for the Detroit Tigers and pitcher Trent Howard in class-A short season for the Baltimore Orioles.
“It’s always good to come back to the Central Michigan community and give back so much of what I was taught,” Sabol said. “A lot of these kids show a lot of promise and hopefully they learned a lot and put it to use.”
Arizona Diamondbacks starting pitcher Josh Collmenter highlighted the group of alumni.
“Coming from a small town (Homer, Mich.) I didn’t go to a lot of camps so to have this opportunity and learn from these coaches will hopefully help them and enhance them,” Collmenter said. “I told the campers some things I’ve come to appreciate and things I’ve learned along the way.”
CMU has the winningest program in the Mid-American Conference with .621 winning percentage. That's a big reason year after year its a popular spot for high school players to visit.
“I think baseball in the state of Michigan is a great sport and the fact that there have been no labor problems makes baseball even more popular,” Jaksa said. “There is a good word out there about Central Michigan baseball and you’ll learn something at Central Michigan camps.”
Baseball in Michigan has become big especially in Mid-Michigan that has produced five state titles in the last five years and the Central Michigan Stars of the Palomino League won the World Series this summer.
But the camps don’t just attract local players; they get athletes from around the Great Lakes to come every year.
“When I was younger I used to come to these camps and they were a blast,” Sabol said.
