Total Baseball Training spearheads summer ball

Late last month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that low-risk youth sports could return on July 6 in areas that reach phase three of the reopening plan. Tompkins County is currently underway with phase four, and there are plans in Ithaca and Lansing to hold summer baseball for kids who were deprived of it during the spring.

Leading the way to bring back baseball is Total Baseball Training, a group led by former Ithaca College player and Ithaca High School coach Tony Prudence and longtime Ithaca College assistant coach Frank Fazio.

The program is for ages 7 to 17 and is scheduled to begin next week. The primary focus will be the training camps, but there will be games against teams from Auburn, Cortland, Tully, Syracuse and Elmira for 12U up to 16U teams during the two week period starting on July 13. For the younger athletes, there will be exhibition games in the evening. Prudence discussed his goals for the summer.

“Number one, it’s supposed to be fun,” Prudence said. “Number two, we’ll make it a skills-based camp with a fun umbrella over the top of it and with the idea of making each of those kits a little bit better but ultimately having them fall in love with the game and stay in love with it so they keep participating.”

It was a quick turnaround to get baseball up and running again after Cuomo’s announcement, which presented some challenges for Town of Lansing Parks and Recreation Supervisor Pat Tyrrell.

“[Total Baseball] was contracted to do most of our baseball for the summer just to give kids opportunities, obviously,” Tyrrell said. “But it’s getting difficult because there’s really no rec departments in the area that are open and there’s no place for kids to play, unfortunately, other than what we have. All of the schools are closed down for playing.”

The camps will be held at Lansing Recreation Complex featuring a strong group of coaches with NCAA experience. The evening games will have modified rules to maximize both playing time and player safety.

“We’re going to utilize pitching machines, and we’ll start with a 2-1 count to move the game along,” Prudence said. “[We want to] get every kid four or five at bats every night that we play. We don’t care if we keep score. For us, this is all about development. Maybe we can teach parents a little bit about what it is about being a better baseball player. It doesn’t have to be what the final score is.”

Masks will be mandatory for all parents, coaches and umpires, and athletes are encouraged to wear a face covering while they play. After a spring without athletics and home-schooling, summer baseball will be a welcome sight. Tyrrell touched on the importance of running the camps and having games this summer.

“The kids need social interaction of some sort,” Tyrrell said. “Kids all over the state are suffering and the country I’m sure. We just wanted to give them as many opportunities as we could get, something, some sport or some camp, even though we have to jump through a lot of hoops to get it to happen. We’re filling up fast with what camps we do have.”

Prudence added that missing out on a baseball season like we did this year could hurt the development of future varsity teams in the area. Total Baseball Training plans on mitigating that damage with its summer program.

“If you take the younger group of kids that are 10, 11, 12, 13 years old and you pull those opportunities away from them, look at what might be the prospects for scholastic sports going forward when you have so little participation or interaction,” Prudence said. “It was paramount that we get something off the ground and offer the kids something to get safely attached to and kind of get some little bit of normal put back in everyone’s life.”

The first session of summer camp will run from July 13 to 17, with the second session starting on July 20 and running through July 24. Players aged 7-12 will play from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and those aged 13 to 17 will go from 2 to 4 p.m. with travel games in the evening.

Registrations for the summer camp will be accepted all the way up to the start date of July 13. For those interested in having their child get on the field this summer, visit LansingRec.com, call 607-533-7388 or go to the Lansing Town Hall in person.