Pike Liberal Art’s baseball coaches Jonnathan Valdez, Allen Ponder and Doug Price are hosting a baseball mini-camp this week for the students of Pike Lib.

The camp is broken down into three different age groups. The 7- and 8-year-olds participated in practice on Monday and Tuesday. The 9- and 10-year-olds will participate on Wednesday and Thursday. The 11- and 12-year-olds will close out the camp with practices on Friday and Saturday.

The camp gives coaches the opportunity to see and work with the future baseball players of Pike Lib.

“I want to see the future athletes that are coming up,” Valdez said. “The earlier they get into the program the better they will be when they get older.”

This is the first year that the Patriots have hosted this camp, and coaches hope it will become an annual event.

“I realized the more you practice with your kids the better you’re going to be,” Valdez said. “We want there to be an easy transition when they get older. If they start working with me and the other coaches, there won’t be a big transition.”

Even though the camp’s age group spans five years and many of players re experiencing competitive baseball for the first time, Valdez has noticed some talent in the camp’s first two days.

“The first two days were challenging,” Valdez said. “I understand that they have some unique capabilities even though they are so young. They were out there both days and they were competing.”

The players are broken into two different groups and they are lead by current members of the Patriots baseball team.

“The kids get to participate with the older guys,” Valdez said. “They get to know the kids on the field. The older players could be a mentor to the younger players. I have the kids work with them. I give them the drills and the kids have responded really well.”

The camp is more about learning the basics of throwing and hitting. Participants have and will learn about foot work while trying to field a ground ball. They will take live bating practice and learn the more advanced fundamentals of baseball.

“I am more interested in the fundamentals,” Vazquez said. “We are working on our foot work to get to ground balls. We work at taking different angles to ground balls. We will work on hitting through soft toss, tea work and live batting practice.”

There is still space available for Pike Students to participate in the remaining sessions.

Wednesday’s session will run from noon- 3 p.m. with Thursday, Friday and Saturday’s sessions running from 8 a.m. until 11 a.m.