Vauxhall Academy of Baseball building international relations

The Vauxhall Academy of Baseball Jets program has already made international inroads for the 2014 fall season by securing recruit K.J. Moreno from Bermuda.

Hopes are that pipeline will continue as Jets head coach Les McTavish helped run a Bermuda-funded baseball camp in the area earlier this month.

“The organization that brought me out, they have a lot of dedicated volunteers. We had a pile of kids, close to 80 kids at the camp,” said McTavish. “They ranged from seven to 13 years of age. We ran two full days of camp, all day long. They had a lot of good athletes there, they just need to learn the game of baseball a little more. There are some possibilities for our program moving forward. We have one player coming here and in the future maybe we can have one per year which would be great.”

Concentrating a lot in the camp on throwing and footwork, McTavish tried to cram as many skills as he could into the two days.

“I had six guys helping out with the camp and they were all great. I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of kids,” said McTavish.

“They want to make it into an annual event and we’ll see what comes out of it, so I think we may.”

Baseball has always been part of the Bermuda culture, but has been on the fringe compared to other sports.

“They have baseball at a young age, they just move to soccer/football, cricket, swimming, or whatever at 12 or 13 years of age because that’s where they think their future is,” said McTavish.

“K.J. Moreno, the kid who is coming to Vauxhall, he helped out at the camp and hopefully that helps add exposure in showing there are things you can do in baseball and there are opportunities. With him coming over here, hopefully it adds to the baseball system there.”

Being a British Commonwealth island, the transition could be fairly smooth if Bermuda’s residents want to make the jump into baseball in North America.

“There is no language barrier, the academics are solid, so it would be a pretty easy transition into the Alberta education system,” said McTavish.

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