Thompson welcomes 95 kids for annual Thompson Warrior Baseball Camp

By ANDREW SIMONSON | Sports Editor

ALABASTER – As the youngest player to take the field at the Thompson Warrior Baseball Camp, five-year-old Dylan Perez caught a pop fly by third base and suddenly had one mission–get his sister out.

With a look of determination on his face, he hurled the ball toward home plate as his sister rounded, forcing a play at the home-plate painted part of the turf field.

While she was safe at the plate, it was just one moment in a week full of memorable ones as the Thompson Warriors hosted 95 kids for their annual camp at James “Peanut” Davenport Field from May 27-28.

This year’s camp brought a major change as thunderstorms throughout the week drenched their usual home of Warrior Park.

The turf fields at James “Peanut” Davenport Field served as a perfect solution as Thompson’s coaches divided up the larger field into smaller stations. That meant for the first time in years, all 95 kids were on the same field.

“We wanted to make sure that the parents and the kids and everybody got those three good days of baseball and then build good relationships and all that, so we switched it to James “Peanut” Davenport, being a turf field, and ended up being fantastic because we got a lot of rain and all the natural fields probably would not be able to run the camp,” Thompson varsity baseball coach Frankie Perez said. “The fact we’re able to do it here, and every kid was at that baseball field, divided the baseball field three parts plus we have two hitting sessions plus a pitching session, base-running, I feel like this is one of the most complete camps that we have had.”

Perez and the coaches kept the kids busy throughout the week with all kinds of activities, including ground ball competitions, fly ball competitions and pick-up whiffle ball games.

They also took time to teach the little things that Perez calls “Baseball 101,” like how to run after hitting the ball, round off first base and get a lead on first before base running.

With kids as young as five and six years old participating, the coaches left plenty of room for the basics like how to catch ground balls and fly balls. They kept the variety coming throughout the week while sprinkling in breaks for the younger kids to catch their breath.

“The youngest group that we have is six years old, and the fact that we’re able to do short stations and rotate every 10-15 minutes, we don’t get those little ones too tired for being in there from 8 to 11 a.m.,” Perez said.
In addition to Perez’s assistant coaches running stations, Thompson’s varsity and JV players continued their tradition of leading the kids throughout the camp, coaching them and encouraging them while building relationships with the kids in their groups.

Perez continues to be amazed at the level of buy-in from his players and how much fun they have leading the camp. He knows that the kids see them as heroes and look up to them, so the players taking time to get to know the campers means a lot to him.

“They’re like their heroes,” Perez said. “They know what jersey that they wear for Thompson High School varsity, they know their names and all that. Some of them even want to take pictures with them after the camp, so they might not say it, but I know that they enjoy themselves based on how they act with the little kids, so I’m very proud of our group, very proud of the culture that we have in our program that our kids want to give back in and they are good members of our baseball community.”

From five-year-old Dylan Perez all the way up to the 18-year-old rising seniors, 13 years of baseball players got to share the same field in Alabaster and show the future of baseball at Thompson and the surrounding areas.

Having been around long enough to see the campers he coached as an assistant graduate from Thompson, Perez is excited to see what the future holds for this week’s attendees.

“That is 13 generations, 13 years, 13 awesome senior classes that could come through Thompson High School,” Perez said. “Seeing these little kids and seeing our guys all be one family, and we start passing T-shirts on and then we had a big huge picture with everybody in it and just seeing all these different generations how I know that someday those six, seven-year-olds will play for me in varsity, I just think that every year is so cool to see how time flies by.”

For Perez, it’s just another reminder of how the love of baseball permeates throughout Alabaster and how that love gets poured into Thompson’s program year after year.

“Every year the most rewarding part is to see how nice and how loved our baseball community is,” Perez said. “Every year we have 95 to 110, 120 kids, and this is such a high vacation week, everybody for Memorial Day goes on vacation, the fact that we’re still averaging that many kids just shows how much our community loves baseball, and for me as a coach and the leader of the program that is involved with the 6Us all the way to our varsity, it’s just rewarding to see how much love we have for the sport that obviously I love and I’m sure that our Warrior family does as well.”