With just under a month until the 2018 National Youth Championships, our Victorian teams continue to prepare themselves and they’re getting plenty of help from the Melbourne Aces.
It’s quite a site to behold on Wednesday nights at the Ballpark when our Melbourne Aces and State Teams programs come together for their weekly session.
At any one time you’ll be able to see up to 80 players on the field, all training together. Young up and coming infielders take ground balls and practice their double plays turns with Jarryd Dale and Darryl George while outfielders take flyballs with 10-year Major League veteran Delmon Young and catchers work alongside Japanese all-star Tomoya Mori and Team Australia’s Allan de San Miguel.
Head out the back to the new bullpen area at Melbourne Ballpark and you’ll see ex-Major Leaguers Mark Hamburger, Virgil Vasquez and Matt Marksberry talk pitching and throwing their bullpens alongside our U16s and U18s and Korean Big Leaguer Hei-Chun Lee showing the kids how he holds his pitches.
When Jon Deeble arrived at the Melbourne Aces last season he spoke a lot about culture and has repeatedly said, “we’re not necessarily trying to win a championship, we’re trying to build a dynasty” and its hard to disagree with those sentiments when you’re there to watch a Wednesday night training session in person.
Having the state teams work in with the Aces is not a new concept and something Baseball Victoria’s High-Performance Manager Damien Shanahan has been quite passionate about for a number of years but the integration of the two programs this year has truly gone to a new level.
Speak to any of the players, particularly the local guys, and they can do nothing but rave about the sessions and something they hope just becomes a part of the expectations of being and Aces player.
The amount of time spent, planning and preparing sessions of this size and getting the buy-in from players and coaches to get the program to this level is something that’s probably been understated in the past. And while the experience of training alongside and being coached by some of the best in the game is absolutely priceless for aspiring players, Shanahan has already hinted at some of his plans to further expand the program to include more players and more coaches.
The 2018 National Youth Championships take place in Sydney from 5 – 14 January while the Aces will return to Melbourne for their next home series against the Sydney Blue Sox from 15 -17 December.