Third-annual baseball-softball skills camp set for Thursday at Garrett Coliseum

By TIM GAYLE

After fighting the weather for the last five months to find a date suitable for a middle school baseball and softball clinic, David Thomas finally decided to solve the problem by moving the event indoors.

Thomas initially set up his clinic for Feb. 11 at Gateway, but it was rained out. He had an alternate date set up the following week at Peter Crump, but had to reschedule again. 

“I’ll just wait until the season is over,” Thomas reasoned. “So I waited until May and this one was going to be at Chisholm. Rained out. So we rescheduled it. Rained out again. So I said I’m not going to schedule any more outdoors.”

The third annual Montgomery Baseball/Softball Skills Camp will be held on Thursday at Garrett Coliseum. The event is open to anyone who will be enrolled in the fourth through the eighth grade this fall, with half the coliseum floor dedicated to baseball and the other half to softball. In addition, there will be a morning session and an afternoon session. 

The morning session is from 8:30-11:30 a.m., while the afternoon session is from 1-4:30 p.m. 

“The parks and recreation department is going to provide transportation from all of the open community centers,” Thomas said. “We’re going to serve them lunch. We’re going to have to curtail it a little from what we would do if it was outside, but we’ll talk about the basic skills -- hitting the ball, fielding the ball and pitching. 

“All of the public school coaches have been notified, but it’s not just for public schools, it’s for all the schools. And we’ll have inspirational speakers that will be there. We’ll have a hitting station, a pitching station, a catching station and an inspirational station and we’ll just rotate them from station to station.”

Registration will take place 30 minutes before the start of each session. A liability waiver must be signed by parents in order to participate. For more information, call David Thomas at 334-322-4909 or email him at dlthomas1531@charter.net