By Jordan Richart

For The Tribune

Don’t let the calendar fool you. It’s never too early to start thinking about baseball.

That is at least the case for the Seymour High School baseball team and young baseball players in the community as the Owls will offer up the eighth annual Winter Pitching Drills Camp.

The camp, which costs $20, will feature two separate 90-minute sessions at 5:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Jan. 4 at the SHS hitting facility. The first session is for second through fourth grades, while the second session is for fifth through eighth grades. Participants should bring a baseball glove and tennis shoes.

The camp will cover pitching techniques, mechanics and drills to do at home to improve. The camp also offers some fun drills, like the radar gun that shows how hard participants can throw the ball. But the main focus will be drills that will improve play, Owls coach Jeremy Richey said.

“The earlier we can get them throwing with proper technique, then the better we are because we worry more about strength as they get older rather than that technique,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to change a kid at a young age than it is to change one in high school.”

The registration fees go to support different needs for the program. The varsity team gets new jerseys each season, and recently, the program invested in technology — purchasing a three-camera system for in-game video feeds as well as a new iPad.

“We don’t have anything in particular, but as needs come up, we use it,” Richey said.

The camp will feature some pretty experienced instructors who are current or former professional baseball pitchers. They include Seymour graduate Zack Brown, a pitcher in the Cincinnati Reds organization; Seymour baseball pitching coach Elvis Hernandez, who pitched in the St. Louis Cardinals organization; and Zach Logue, who has Major League Baseball experience with the Oakland Athletics and Detroit Tigers. Logue recently signed a minor league deal with the Atlanta Braves.

The idea for the camp started when Brown was still in college at the University of Kentucky and Richey knew he would receive big news in the MLB draft that year.

“We thought it would be a good experience for him to work with our kids,” he said.

Those pitching camps required compliance on a range of issues to satisfy NCAA regulations, Richey said. When Brown was drafted, he continued to participate in the camp.

Brown has brought teammates from the University of Kentucky who also have professional baseball careers, including Logue.

“They are willing to come back every year, and it has progressed,” Richey said. “It’s such a cool experience for the kids in our community.”

Richey said he is not surprised Brown, Logue and others return each year for the camp.

“They’re unbelievable kids,” he said. “They’re very humble, thankful kids. They get just as much enjoyment out of it as the kids.”

Richey and Brown remain close and still talk often about baseball and Brown’s career. Brown recently pitched for the Louisville Bats, the Cincinnati Reds’ Triple A affiliate. That allowed for Richey and his family to attend about four or five games.

“It was a really cool experience,” he said.

Having Brown around also helps show the high school baseball team that it is important to be involved in something like the camp, which helps create relationships with the younger kids in the community.

“They will come to our games when our season begins and they have that relationship, which I think is important because they’re building relationships with the future Owls,” Richey said, adding it benefits his team to see the instructors work out in the offseason to prepare for the next season. “You start to see our kids have a light bulb turn (on) where they realize that’s how they should be working.”

Richey said some kids who have attended the camp in the past have gone on to make the team in high school, which he said is a neat thing for the program.

“I think with this camp is that it creates an interest in baseball,” he said. “When you have a kid who is as close to the big leagues as Zack has been and obviously with Logue, they know he’s been there.”

That helps humanize professional baseball players, Richey said, which goes a long way in inspiring the youth who attend the camp to work hard because they see the instructors as pretty normal people.

“They start to realize that if they put in the time and work that maybe they would have a shot,” he said. “They can have dreams of making it to that level because they have seen someone from Seymour do it.”

Richey said he has observed that kids have improved a lot with their skills because of the camp. This has helped create a love for the game, he said, and that has resulted in better play in Seymour.

Richey may be onto something as the 2023 Owls were the Hoosier Hills Conference champions and won 23 games. Richey said many considered the Owls to have a potent offense last season, and he said while the offense was good, the pitching came through, as well.

“Our pitchers didn’t give up a lot of runs,” he said. “We won our conference championship 3-2 in 12 innings.”

Richey said having Hernandez on the staff for the baseball team is a tremendous asset to the program. Hernandez will help the other instructors with questions, the kids attending the camp and all of it benefits the team because of the experience he has and his ability to connect with players.

“He does such a great job at making our pitchers better,” Richey said.

Richey said he expects the 2024 team to be just as competitive as it has been in the past, especially since the team will only lose one pitcher.

“If we can keep making these guys better in the offseason, I think it’s going to be another successful season for us,” he said.

If you go

What: Seymour High School baseball team’s Winter Pitching Drill Camp

When: 5:30 p.m. (second through fourth grade) and 7 p.m. (fifth through eighth grade) Jan. 4

Where: Seymour High School bitting facility

Cost: $20

Information: Coach Jeremy Richey at [email protected]