Batter up: Washington baseball camp starts despite weather

Published 8:33 am Wednesday, June 18, 2025

By Jason O. Boyd

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When the storms of Sunday night and early Monday morning came, the start of the Washington High School Summer Baseball Camp became an indoor event on the first day.

The first of two sessions of Washington High School baseball coach Will Tyson’s fourth annual baseball camp began in the Pam Pack gym. Those heavy rains continued Monday night, making it tricky to get different kinds of instruction in for those who wanted to take part.

Despite the weather, boys ages 6-9 took part in a variety of drills meant to teach and help them become better players. That even included a bonding session at the end, where players took wiffle ball batting practice. Tyson pitched and many of the children launched “homers” into the stands by slapping the ball from one side of the gym, where the bleachers were folded up, to the other, which was unfolded.

“Despite a very, very wet ball field, I felt like we got a lot accomplished,” said Tyson, who was hopeful to get in live pitching and hitting on the field, especially later in the week with the campers ages 10-14.

“You know, each day I’ve been trying to make myself notes, and I’ve got three pages worth of notes, and we got through about two pages of it in the gym, so I’ll consider that an accomplishment that we got through that much inside.”

Covering all the bases is literally what Tyson hopes the camp accomplishes. In addition to going through a lot of drills and instruction with both age groups, a pitching and catching camp was scheduled on the last day to give even more personal instruction.

“So, my whole premise for this camp is to just start instilling the little fundamentals, the little drills, that can hopefully, when they get up to me at the high school level, they already mastered it,” Tyson said. “That’s the hope.

“If they can take one thing out of the camp, take it home and do it, that’s what we’re trying to learn, the fundamentals, so by the time they get to high school, we’re playing ball, I’m not having to teach fundamentals. That’s the goal.”

Tyson had around 20-25 boys at the ages 6-9 camp, and expected 15 or more at the ages 10-14 camp.

“Yeah, it’s a lot of the same concepts that we do at the high school level,” Tyson said. “It’s just breaking it down, like, for example, fielding a ground ball on a hula hoop. You know, having them somewhere to understand where their feet go and where their glove goes.

“Instead of them just fielding a ball to field a ball, it’s doing little fun, little drills like that. It’s the same thing we do, but doing it at a much lower level.”

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