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Volume 1 Issue 1
Team Woodinville’s Garrett DeRooy Gets A
FULL RIDE
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look inside Features Page 1 Glen Jones: Coaching Boys (and Baseball) by Manny Frishberg
Page 3 Homecourt’s Pat Scott introduces a new column in TEAM
Page 4 The Positive Side of Sports by Kathryn Lengell of The Transition Point
Page 5 Conditioning For Better Performance by Jan Selby Personalized Training Team 7275 W. Lake Sammamish Pkwy. NE Redmond, WA 98052 Phone: 425-885-4825 info@personaltrainingteam.com www.personaltrainingteam.com
Page 6 COVER STORY: Garrett DeRooy Gets A Full Ride by Abe Bayer
Page 10 To Snack of Not To Snack by Regan Montano
Page 12 Northshore Sports Complex: Training For Baseball and Life by Manny Frishberg
Welcome to the debut of TEAM (The Eastside Athletic Magazine). We hope you’re going to enjoy the articles and information you find inside this sneak preview issue as much as we enjoyed putting them together. The focus of TEAM Magazine is youth athletics; the athletes (boys and girls), coaches, trainers, sponsors, parents, organizations, boards, umpires, and anything else related to kids sports I may have failed to mention here. We’ll have stories about kids like Garrett DeRooy (our cover story) who are on the fast track to a professional baseball career, but we’ll also have stories about kids enjoying a particular sport for no other reason than they enjoy being on a TEAM. If you think your team – any team, any sport – would make an interesting story in our TEAM, I hope you’ll let us know. You can drop us a line at jim@eteammagazine.com. Subscriptions to TEAM are available through our website, www.eteammagazine.com or you can fill out the form found on our back cover this month. Ten dollars of every subscription is donated to whatever league, organization or PTSA you want. You just have to tell us who that is. Starting in September, 2006 TEAM Magazine will publish quarterly, and throughout the year we’ll also send subscribers our newsletter, TEAM Xtra. Watch that newsletter for information about the TEAM club. Details will be announced soon. Enjoy TEAM, and look for the full magazine on sale September 21. And, if you feel like it, let us know what you think – good or bad. We’ll be listening to each and every comment we receive. Warmly, Jim Lengell, Publisher
By Manny Frishberg
Glen Jones: Coaching Boys (and Baseball)
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Sometimes the most important thing a coach can do is just be there. After all, no less of a sports authority than Woody Allen said “80 percent of success is showing up.” “Glen Jones knows the importance of being there, for his business, his kids and his team of 14-year-olds in Woodinville’s Select Sandy Koufax baseball league. Growing up the youngest of eight children on a Nebraska farm, Glen’s own father passed away when he was a small child. But he says it wasn’t until he had children of his own that he realized how much he missed having a father-figure as he was growing up. “It didn’t really occur to me until I
had my own kids, that I was really missing that kind of thing in my life. At the same time I was starting this business, which takes a lot of your time and effort,” he says. “The first five years you have to immerse yourself in the business. At the same time my wife dropped a few hints that said, ‘You’d better stop working so much. We’ve got some kids coming up here – you’ve got to spend more time with the family, too.’ Once they got to the age where they were starting with sports, I said, I’m going to take the time to spend with them.” The company he founded, TechPower, an IT service and sales organization now in its 12th year, affords Glen
the time he needs to devote to his kids’ sporting careers. His oldest son Connor is on the 14-year-old Sandy Koufax team, his 11-year-old son Griffen is playing on a Little League team Jones also coaches, and his daughter, 8-yearold Alena is playing minor little league softball, which her mother, Darlene Jones coaches. Spring and summer, he says, is the time his employees know he will be occupied much of the time with baseball. In a hectic week he could have as many as 10 or more practices and games to attend. He says he simply had to learn to delegate. “If you hire good people, they’ll do www.eteammagazine.com
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We are ver y careful in se le ct i ng t h e t ea m , a n d it ’s not always based on the best players on the field. a good job for you, and that’s what I’ve been able to do,” Jones says. “They can make decisions when I’m not there. Or they can always reach me on the cell phone.” Taking what you do seriously but not being driven by it is at the heart not only of how he runs his business, but how Glen Jones manages his team. “He’s not a very strict guy. He’s more of a relaxed coach, but as we are getting older he is expecting more from us – and he does let us know,” says Zachary Lengell, one of the 14-yearolds Jones has been coaching for the past two years. “He’s taught me a lot of character. I messed up on something and he pulled me aside more like a father would and told me it was going to be good and just to do it on my next atbat. And I got a hit on my next at-bat.” Jones says the team benefits from the drive and powerful work ethic of their batting and fielding instructor, Chris Schuchart, at the Northshore Sports Complex, an indoor training facility which the team starts going to in the winter before the season starts. “Chris is a very talented, hard working, hard pushing kind of a coach,” says Glen Jones. “We try to complement that, making sure they’re still having a good time with what they’re doing. I want them to enjoy it but I also want them to push themselves, how to work hard at to see the benefit of that in the long run. “I want to see them benefit from having a good experience and wanting to keep playing. I’ve seen some teams out there where the coaches are very harsh in the way they handle the kids – yeller and screamers. That’s against the philosophy that I have, personally.” Another key aspect to Jones’s approach
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to coaching baseball is forming the right kind of team. “When you get into a year where you’re going to spend eight months with a group of kids, that’s your biggest hope of all – that you’re going to have team chemistry,” Jones says. “We are very careful in selecting the team, and it’s not always based on the best players on the field. A lot of times it’s based on the personality characteristics we pick up during our try-outs. We really have a team that gets along together and they have fun together. “That there’s not a lot of disputes or squabbles or playing time issues, not only with the kids but with their parents. If you’ve gotten through the year and you’ve had very little of that, you’ve done a pretty good job of managing the overall atmosphere of the team. One of the things I take pride in is trying to make sure that it works.” Jones says the coaches conducted a survey at the beginning of training to ask, among other things, what the kids wanted from the experience of playing in the Woodinville baseball League this year. He was surprised when the Number One answer coming back was “to learn” and that “having fun” also beat out “winning” in the priority list. But following those surveys helped Jones and his two assistant coaches, Scott Brueske and Dr. Chris Johnson, set their priorities. Last year, having learned that the boys wanted to travel to out-of-the area tournament, they scheduled a week in Mesquite, Nevada, north of Las Vegas this year. “We went there in April and played in the tournament (3rd place) – swam in the pool and our families got to hang out over the long weekend of Spring Break,” says Jones. “After the tourna-
ment a majority of the team went to Zion National Park, did a day hike to a bunch of various spots, it was beautiful. They’re going to remember the fun stuff of being together as a team long after they remember the results or the scores.” Baseball has just always been there in Glen Jones’s life. He grew up near the local ball field. When they were young he and his brothers and friends used to hang around and watch the older boys practice for their games, hustling out to shag hit balls for them and nailing together broken and discarded bats to play with when they were gone. Jones played through his high school years in the Midwest and joined the team at Everett Community College when he moved out west. But there he found he was outclassed by the quality of game in the Washington Community College system. “I wasn’t a very good hitter,” he admits. “I did get to pitch one game, against Seattle Pacific University. I won that game. It was the only time they really let me pitch.” Since it was an exhibition game his win was not recorded. Eventually he found his way to coaching, something which he greatly enjoys. But he says he may have reached the point where he has given these boys as much as he has to give. “Perhaps [I’ll be] stepping down from coaching myself, just to find someone that’s got more baseball teaching skills – people that have been in the game longer and/or are better at instructing than I am.” And, Jones says there is another reason for thinking about taking a step back. “When you’ve been coaching your son for 10 years there comes a time to let go and he wants you to let go.”
By Pat Scott
This Summer Develop A New Skill I recognize that this isn’t a real controversial statement, but “summers are great”. I mean; family vacations, sunny days and most importantly no school. What’s there not to love? Basketball players have another reason to be excited for June, July and August; summer is a great time to work on becoming a complete player. A complete player is someone who not only has spent the time to improve their strengths, but has also worked to limit their weaknesses. A perimeter player who can; dribble the ball effectively with either hand, shoot from long-range and drive to the basket, is a complete player. A post player who can; play with their back to the basket, face up on the perimeter and has a series of moves and counters, is a complete player. The summer time provides the time and opportunity to add to the aspects of your game that may have been neglected during other parts of the year. During the fall you need to work on your strengths and conditioning to get into basketball shape for the upcoming season. In the winter, all of your energies are focused on making sure your team’s season is as successful as possible. Come spring you may be playing other sports or perhaps playing on an AAU or select team. Spring teams provide many benefits for young players; playing with kids from other schools, traveling to tournaments, playing in highly competitive environment. But the goal of these spring teams is to compete/win and your responsibility as a good teammate is to do whatever your coach asks you to do to benefit the team. For instance, if you are the tallest player on your team, your coach will need you to play near the basket to get
rebounds and scoring opportunities in the paint. You may not be able to work on your ball handling or improve your shooting range. As another example, as your team’s best ball handler and passer, you are responsible for bringing the ball up the court against pressure and getting the offense started. Maybe other players are responsible for carrying the scoring load and you don’t get as many opportunities to work on shooting off the pass. Working on new skills during the summer can help you get back into basketball gradually, especially if you are feeling a little burnt out after playing for so many months in a row. Start by identifying the areas of your game you will focus on during the summer. Younger players may want to focus on skills and fundamentals that are outside of their normal position. Many players have a height advantage in younger grades only to see their peers start to catch up as they get closer to high school and find themselves having to learn a new position to get playing time. Every young player can benefit by focusing on improving ball handling and shooting mechanics. High school players may want to look to add something new to their current skill set. Guards and wings may want to improve shooting range by a few feet, add a new scoring move from the wing or become more comfortable dribbling the ball against pressure. Post players may want to add a new step-through move or develop their off hand to become an even more effective scorer around the basket. The important thing is to find something to work on and stick with it throughout the summer months. The summer time offers many different places to work on your game as well.
summer is a great time to work on becoming a complete player
If you have a personal coach, ask them to help you develop your new skills. Enlist mom or dad to help you out in the driveway or backyard court. Summer camps are another place to add elements to your game and also hear from coaches you may not normally get the chance to work with at your school. Many high schools and community centers offer open gym times during the summer providing an opportunity to try some of your new skills in an environment where losing a game doesn’t count against your teams’ record, it only means you have to sit one out. How ever you decide to spend your time working on your game this summer, I’d be willing to bet that as you notice improvements, you will become even more excited to work on your game. By the time summer is over, you’ll be ready to get down to the business of preparing for tryouts and the upcoming season. You won’t be the only one ready for a great season. Your coach will be too.
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The Positive Side of Sports Before you ever set foot in the car to drive your son or daughter to their upcoming game, one could decide ahead of time exactly how the day will go and be reminded of just how important it is to set the tone of the day before the upcoming game. You are your child’s most important role model. Even when you think your child isn’t listening to you, he/she is. Your child watches your face, listens to your words, and sees the attitude and outlook before the sports game ever begins. Your daughter/son listens to you with their mind wide open to hear what you think, and allows your words, body language, and the essence of you to help them decide who they are going to be this day, and this goes far beyond the game at hand into the everyday life of the family unit. As parents, we have all sat in the stands and listened while a parent tore into their child’s self-esteem with criticism, leaving them standing on the field, feeling that they are the biggest loser in the game. We’ve watched a child’s face fall, as a parent tells them what they should have done, after the fact, to make the play or get the winning score. No one can get a moment back to relive it, and this mode of communication is not only destructive but defeating. We get to decide how we will show up in life, and we pass this on to our kids. If you think back on your own childhood, you may have had a parent just like this one described here. What would you have given to hear an encouraging word and to be told “don’t worry about it…you’re doing great”, instead of begin criticized in front of everyone at the game. Every child sets out to do his absolute best, just as every grown-up does in the working world. No person ever intends to go into any given situation to do their worst. We have the most amazing opportunity to help our child remember his/her greatness, and I’m excited to help each person remember this fact. What would happen if your child only heard positive affirmations before a game, and was taught positive self-talk as a tool for life? Positive affirmations are a great tool for everyone to use, because it puts the power right in your hands to decide ahead of time exactly who you will be and how you will act, despite whatever may happen within your day or within the sport your child is playing. What would the outcome be for the game he/she is playing if your child heard “today is a great day, and I can’t wait to watch you play”, “you are going to be playing your best game ever”, and “I know you can do it, because you are a great athlete”, and “you are going to have a perfect game today, even if you don’t win, because you get to decide that this moment”. If children are taught powerful tools to use in their lives, such as a daily ritual of positive self-talk, and if they watch their parents using this same tool, they will quickly learn that the power of creating their day is right in their own minds and they will use it. The most powerful
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and successful people we know did not get where they are by criticizing themselves and by a steady stream of negative self-talk. They succeeded because they told themselves every single day “you can do it”, and they are successful because they believed in themselves without wavering. It’s a little-known fact that it takes 17 seconds of thinking about something in your mind before your thoughts begin to create your future reality. When life happens in a way that I’m not happy about or someone I encounter demonstrates “unskilled behavior”, sometimes I give myself the entire 17 seconds because I’m furious about something and my ego has taken over and perhaps I feel justified to think of some pretty amazingly negative things to focus on. Sometimes I can catch myself right away and ask myself if this is how I really want my day to go, and do I really wish to spend an entire day of my wonderful life in anger, disappointment or defensiveness. Much more importantly, do I wish to encounter similar people or create similar circumstances for myself in the future? I can usually calm right down if I remember this, and I can choose to redirect my thoughts into more positive ones that create much more positive experiences for my life. I’m hoping there are many parents who feel the way I do, and those parents would like to live in a peaceful, harmonious world with their children. The choice always rests right within our own family unit and our very own homes; and when we choose to focus on the positive side of life, life provides us with positive feedback and mirrors our choices back to us. If your life isn’t reflecting back to you what you wish to experience, it might be time to take a look at your output. It could be time to ask yourself what you really would like to experience in your life, along with remembering that you get to choose it. We each are responsible for creating our experiences, and the power is within our own minds. Teaching your children this valuable truth will empower their lives and move them into a life of choice and positive outcomes. Sports gives both parents and kids the most amazing opportunity to “practice” being positive that I’ve ever seen. As I personally sit in the cheering section, I know in my heart what my job as a parent and as a human being is. It is to be the role model for my kids and those around me. Expressing my positive comments out loud encourages my own interpersonal relationships with the parents I sit with and to BE the change I wish to see in the world, and it also plays the part of keeping me on my path in the bigger journey called “life”. This not only affects my child’s life, but it affects me and everyone I come into contact with, and it doesn’t stop there. It affects the game I’m enjoying, the community I live in, and it continues to ripple out from there to affect the world we all live in. And while I’m busy changing the world from my seat in the stands, I also get to watch and enjoy the game my child is playing and see the joy in my child’s face right in front of my eyes.
By Kathryn Lengell
Conditioning for Increased Performance Everyone knows that the more you practice your sport, the more you master it. The same holds true for your muscles and joints. The more conditioned they are, the stronger your performance will be with less risk of injury. Conditioning can begin at any age level with some restrictions. Conditioning for a sport is multifaceted. A well-rounded Conditioning Program involves cardiovascular training, resistance training, flexibility, and core and back strengthening. In addition to these, rest and nutrition play key roles in your success. Cardiovascular conditioning is also referred to as the aerobic portion of the program. This involves a steady state of increased heart rate for at least 20 minutes. Your heart is a muscle and needs to be exercised like the other muscles in your body. Interval training is another form of cardio training that involves taking your heart rate to a higher level then back down to a lower level and repeating this pattern. An example would be on a running track. You may jog the length of the track and sprint around the corners. Your heart rate would increase and decrease depending on your speed. To find out what your Target Heart Rate is: Take 220 – Age and multiply this figure by .65 and by .85. This gives you a range that your heart rate should stay within. These are merely guidelines and a trainer can help you determine exact numbers for you and your sport. Resistance Training varies depending on the age of the athlete. Younger athletes, ages 10-14 should focus most of their training on body weight exercises and very light hand weights. Their bodies and bones are still growing and need to stay away from heavier resistance. Examples of
body weight exercises are push ups, squats, lunges, dips, etc. Athletes that are 15 and older can begin to add in strength training with machines and free weights. They must begin with supervision to ensure proper form, weight control and safety. It is best to begin with one set of exercises and let the body adapt. You can then begin to add in multiple sets depending on where they are in the season. Flexibility training is vital for increased performance in your sport. A 5 minute, full-body stretch routine can prevent many injuries and help you excel in your particular sport. For example, a catcher needs great flexibility in the legs and lower back to stay in that position for an entire game. A pitcher needs flexibility in their pitching arm for more velocity and to prevent shoulder injuries. Soccer players need flexibility in their legs to prevent inner thigh pulls, etc. Many sports will put your body in awkward positions and the more flexible you are, the better you will be able to handle it. Core and Back Strengthening is essential for velocity, power, and injury prevention. Your core is the powerhouse of your body. The stronger this area is, and the more you are aware of its power, the better you become at your sport. If your abdominals and back are not strong, your arms and legs will not be either. Core and Back training consists of abdominal exercises, balance and coordination exercises and exercises specifically designed to teach you the transfer of power from your core to your arms or legs. For example, a pitcher, soccer player, golfer, etc, may think that the power comes from their arms or legs. If you can learn to tap into your core, your arms and legs will dramatically increase in their power.
Rest and Nutrition are key components to making the whole system work. Your body becomes stronger on your Rest days as opposed to the days you do your Conditioning Program. If you are tired and sore, skip a conditioning day and rest your body. Nutrition is very important in how you are feeling to perform your sport. Your body IS like a machine and needs to be fueled with a balance of proteins, carbohydrates, fats and lots of water. Look for future articles geared towards Sports Nutrition. There are many benefits for youth to begin a Conditioning Program for their sport. Teams are becoming more and more competitive. With just one or two days of conditioning a week, confidence levels increase, the risk of injury decreases, muscles and ligaments are able to handle repetitive movements better, athletes become stronger and more powerful, they have increased coordination and balance, and they begin to develop body awareness. The Conditioning Program can begin at any time of the year and varies depending if the youth is In Season or Off Season. During the Off Season, youth have more time to devote to all the components of the program. During the season, resting and stretching on non-game days provide the best benefit. To get started with a Conditioning Program, it is best to consult an expert in the field of health and fitness to write out a sport-specific program and go through it multiple times with the athlete to ensure proper form on the exercises. Remember, just a few days a week will have many positive benefits in the athlete’s performance and it will develop lifelong, healthy habits. Isn’t it time to get started?
By Jan Shelby www.eteammagazine.com
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By Abe Bayer
full ride Full Ride
kids out there a better chance to play better baseball.” Learning the game under more challenging conditions than most kids his age has done nothing but good for Garrett’s skills. From the beginning, he showed flashes of his current blend of speed, strength, and a throwing arm that has enabled the star shortstop to moonlight on the mound. “I was throwing almost 90 miles an hour from shortstop,” he says of how he attracted the attention that led to his becoming a part-time pitcher. “My strongest pitches are a hard fastball, and this weird one they call the ‘dead fish’…it’s like a splitter, but I throw it like a changeup.” Dan Galaz is a baseball scout who has been following Garrett’s development since he first coached him five years ago. “Garrett exhibited a very strong arm when he was thirteen years of age,” he says. “He stood out like a sore thumb. “I remember one game in specific, it was against the Seattle Stars, probably the premier team in the whole Seattle area…he dove into the hole toward third base, which is a long throw even for a major leaguer, and threw out the runner at first base from his knees. After the throw the Seattle Star’s coach looked at me and said something to the effect, ‘that kid has an arm!’ That same coach recruited Garrett to play tournaments after he finished with us that summer.” But if this kind of precocious athleticism suggests an altogether smooth ride, it is misleading. Like any story worth telling, Garrett’s has not been without its trials and tribulations. Perhaps his most daunting obstacle presented itself early in his high school career, the greater part of which saw him fail to crack the starting lineup. “That first year was kind of tough,” he remembers. “I didn’t really play much my junior year, but my senior year (coach) gave me a chance to play.” It was an arduous test of character, an at times frustrating experience that might have broken the will of a less determined, less mentally tough young man. But Garrett DeRooy didn’t give up on himself. While his junior year passed with him basically reduced to a practice player on his school team, he whiled away much of his free time at Pete Wilkinson’s Baseball Academy. “Wilkinson had seen him pitch in a junior high game,” says Michael DeRooy of Wilkinson, a local legend and baseball guru who starred on a USC team that won the national championship and whose academy counts as alumni 33 major www.eteammagazine.com
cove r s t o r y
The journey begins in a much purer place than the choices it can lead to-temptation and steroids and money and the pressure of only being as good as your last at-bat. In its earlier forms, it may find you standing just off the third base line, hunched at the ready. You, 13 or 14 years old, churning a pair of cleats into the dirt of the base path, punching a clenched fist into the darkly-oiled leather of your glove, anticipating the first pitch of your latest spring. And then, priorities change. The journey from those beautiful baseball springs and summers usually ends in high school, maybe college. It lives on only in weekend softball beer leagues, or vicariously, perhaps, in living rooms or at the tavern on the corner, watching the exploits of the few who do get paid to go on playing ball into manhood. The fading of one man’s dream can be the beginning of another’s, a father passing on his dream to his son. The son falling in love, making the dream his own, chasing it through his own youth, passing on into adulthood like the rest of us but never forgetting his golden summers, until he has a son of his own. And every now and then, lightening strikes. With just the right mixture of love and talent and discipline and luck and faith, some father’s son chases the dream until he catches hold of it and lives it. Garrett DeRooy might just turn out to be one of those sons. “My dad got me into (baseball) when I was really young, before school, even, when I was four or five,” says the sixfoot, one hundred eighty-pound Woodinville High School senior. “Right away, I fell in love with it. I love playing the game. “I like the game because it’s so challenging, because you fail most of the time, you know?” When it comes to playing baseball, seventeen-year-old Garrett has failed a lot less than most. “Soon as he could walk, he was swinging a bat,” says Garrett’s father, Michael DeRooy. Mr. DeRooy has been a major influence in his son’s athletic development, even building a select team around his precocious son during what would have been his Little League years “because I knew he needed to be challenged. “I wanted him to play ‘big’ ball,” Mr. DeRooy says now of his decision to circumvent his boy’s Little League experience, “with leading off, stolen bases, like in the big leagues… (forming the select team) was basically just to give the better
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league baseball draftees. “He was coaching a select team of 17 and 18 year olds, kids getting ready for college, and he invited Garrett to play for him. Garrett was 15; it took him one month to beat out the senior at shortstop.” From then on, Mr. DeRooy says, the Wilkinson Academy became an integral part of his son’s growth. “He basically lived there. He used the time to study the pitchers he caught for. It really helped his development.” Peter Wilkinson speaks highly of his former pupil. “Garrett’s name was referred to me by a couple of clients of ours, who said that he had baseball ability and was the type of young man I would like to work with. I interviewed him and his family about their goals inside and outside of baseball, and I worked him out to look at the baseball abilities he would bring to the table. “We hit it off in terms of relationship, I like his projectability as a future collegiate athlete, and we agree that it would be a good fit to work together. Recognizing Garrett’s estimable qualities both on and off the field, Wilkinson put his money where his mouth was when it came time to consider the problem of how the DeRooys’ might shoulder the financial burden inherent in their son attending the Academy. “Our fee structure would have made it difficult for him to participate in the Academy program, so I offered him a partial scholarship and an internship working within the Academy. He did a terrific, enthusiastic job for us and for the students he helped us with, and we were excited to have him with us.” While he acknowledges the irony of a D1 prospect having trouble just cracking his high school lineup, Wilkinson regards this scenario pragmatically and thinks it ultimately worked to Garrett’s benefit. “It’s common knowledge that Woodinville High School has lots of good athletes who play baseball,” he says. “There have been rumors that it’s tough for kids who work with private instructors to get a chance at Woodinville, but the truth is that 12 members of the State Championship team worked with me and that many other have before and since. “So I think the fact that Garrett had a hard time breaking into the lineup served to make him tougher, to clear his mind about how much he loves the game, and how much he wants to succeed. As much as all of us parents (I’m one, too) would like it to be easier for our kids, it’s often better for them when it’s really hard. And for Garrett, parts of his high school ca-
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reer were really hard.” Woodinville senior Brent Miller graduated with Garrett this spring. Bound for college baseball himself (he’ll be staying closer to home to play ball for the Huskies), he has been playing with Garrett since the two were “playing up” as a couple of 15-year-olds on a select team for 18-year-olds. “He’s the greatest teammate in the world,” Miller says. “He loves to play…practices, games-he’s always got a smile on his face.” Fast forward to this, Garrett’s senior year, a time that has seen those years of select play and countless hours at the Academy come to fruition; a redemption, of sorts. Finally given a chance to start for Woodinville, he has been an onfield leader for a team that advanced to the regional finals, batting .500 and receiving an Honorable Mention to the AllKing County team. “It was a pretty darn good year,” he says proudly. In more than one regard. Last Spring brought a lifechanging experience at Stanford University’s annual baseball camp. In a crowd of over 500 top-notch ballplayers from around the country, Garrett managed to catch the eye of Mike Diaz, the man who would make Garrett an offer he couldn’t refuse. “There were a lot of colleges from the east coast and the south, a lot of schools who don’t get to see a lot of west coast
“Garrett has a competitive fire that cannot be taught.” Dan Galaz players,” Garrett says. “And I met Coach Diaz, because he was the infield coach for the camp. After a couple of days he walked up to me and said, ‘You’re one of the best three infielders at this camp. I’ve got a lot of (scholarship) money left over for this year, and I want to offer you a full ride to Centenary College.’ He was pretty aggressive…I was looking at Santa Clara, and Washington was looking at me, too. “After Centenary’s offer, they kind of gave up!” “It was huge, because a lot of people didn’t know who he was,” Michael DeRooy laughs. “It was like, ‘who is this kid?’” Diaz, an assistant coach for the Shreveport, Louisianabased Division 1 baseball powerhouse, looks at his decision to corral Garrett as a solid investment, through and through. “At the Stanford camp, you get to see kids in a hitting and defensive session, and they spend the other half of the day playing. And the first thing I noticed about Garrett was his arm…the kid’s got a great arm. “He’s a hard worker-he gets after it out there. You also look to see how long it takes for a kid to pick up on things, if you can show ‘em something and they’ll get it the first time. Garrett’s a quick learner.” Diaz sees the need for further development in the likely areas – “He needs to get better offensively, needs to get stronger physically. You always want to see more power… and that’s always the last thing to come.” – but he is confident not only in Garrett’s having the drive and work ethic this improvement will demand, but in his support system, as well. “I visited and met his family, and the first thing you notice is their passion for his passion.” As for the possibility of Garrett’s much-lauded arm throwing him right to The Show? “I can’t comment on whether he’ll be drafted in his junior year, or whatever,” says Diaz cautiously. “All we’re worried about right now is his transition to D1 ball…the rest’ll take care of itself. This is D1 baseball; we don’t show interest in a kid if we don’t see potential in him…(to play pro ball). “We’re expecting him to be a good player for us.” From skipping Little League, to being the youngest player on select team after select team, to struggling to crack the starting lineup for the majority of his high school career, Garrett DeRooy’s journey has taken a route that has been anything but traditional. In so many ways, it is a study in the kind of up-by-your-own-bootstraps thinking that eschews shortcuts and self pity, relying instead on hard work, tenac-
ity, and a general ability to come away from one’s experiences stronger, fairness (or lack thereof) be damned. “Garrett,” says Dan Galaz, “has a competitive fire that cannot be taught.” Wilkinson, for his part (and a considerable one it’s been), believes Garrett’s combination of integrity, discipline and on-field passion bodes well for his next chapter, and beyond. “In an age and a setting (competitive sports) in which it’s hard to think like a real person, Garrett DeRooy is a real person,” he says. “I admire what he has learned achieved so far, and I look forward to continuing our friendship as he chases new challenges for the future.” Rather than suggesting that Garrett came from out of nowhere to secure a full-ride scholarship at a perennial Division 1 baseball power despite the frustration of his high school experience, Mr. DeRooy believes that situation ultimately did nothing less than further stoke that flame. “What it did, it was a motivator for him,” he says matter-of-factly. “He just used that to train harder. He ended up getting more out of it, in the long run. His work ethic is tremendous-that’s what’s gotten him through a lot of hardships. Basically (Garrett’s) whole life, you could never tell him he couldn’t do something, because he was gonna prove you wrong. He just couldn’t believe he was gonna fail. “I’m really proud of him for that.” www.eteammagazine.com
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By Regan Montano
To Snack or Not to Snack? With each new sports season, we parents invariably get bombarded with minutia. Uniforms and gear to buy. Picture packets to purchase. Carpool friendships to foster. The list is seemingly endless, yet somehow we all get through it time and time again, season after season, managing to get the kids where they need to be…for the most part. It really is incredible when you look at the big picture, and then multiply it by several children. For that fact alone, I think we all deserve a pat on the back (albeit at the risk of tearing our rotator cuffs or something and being laid up for the season! Scratch the pat on the back idea…all together now, “Hip, hip hooray for all of us.” Or is that “Hip hip replacement?”). I do have to mention one tradition with youth sports that makes my blood pressure spike at the mere thought of it. The dreaded snacks! UGH! When my first son was teeny teeny tiny, I was much nicer and more patient, because I didn’t think twice about the snack thing. I was new at this kid/sports/mom thing, so I went with the flow, dutifully carrying out whatever task I was assigned. Then my next son got as involved as the first (they are 13 months apart), so I would be assigned two separate snack spots on the “Official Snack List” for whatever sport we happened to be involved in. Perfectly fair, not a problem. Well, sonny boy number three happens along a couple years later, and by this time, my store of “nice” and “patient” was way used up. When my older two reached first grade and kindergarten respectively, I coached them for the first time, and it was incredible. Not only did I follow suit and do the snack thing, but I remember carting home at least a million boxes of
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chocolate bars after practice one night that I was supposed to distribute to the team/sell in all my spare time as a fund raiser. Are you kidding me?! Charge me a few extra bucks and keep your stinkin’ candy bars! Hmmmm, I should have put my foot down on that one!! Anyway, I digress…so, same story, sport after sport, and I pretty much am involved with coaching the boys through all of them in one way or another. One day, on the morning of our first basketball practice when my oldest son was in the 5th grade, I had an epiphany. I was gathering all my paperwork, notes, plays for practice, and I decided right then and there that there would no longer be snacks on any team I was coaching. I did not want to see another parent slink out of a gym or off of a field in horror as they suddenly remembered that they were responsible for snacks that particular day. I am fairly certain that most of us run our lives with the same kind of routine…wake up/breakfast/lunch/ dinner, with maybe some munchies in between. My kids will have whatever meal is appropriate before a game. There is no need to have a snack after an hour basketball game. Some water, sure, but a donut and a juice box? Not necessary in my “incredibly humble” opinion. So I went through my day waiting for practice, hoping I would not anger too many parents with my newfound strength of spirit and clarity regarding the dreaded snacks! After all, never once did I hear any other “nice or patient” parent complain before. I felt so alone, but remained committed to my plan. You can not begin to imagine my surprise when I unveiled “Operation No Snacks.” I was met with a thunderous round of applause, shrill whistles, hoots and hollers! “Thank goodness!” “It’s about time someone put their foot down!” “Bless you…” were just some of the exuberant phrases directed towards the self-proclaimed “Snack Grinch”. I could feel my heart grow three sizes as a mischievous smile of relief snaked across my face. I gathered my whistle and my boys for practice, and bid adieu to my wonderful parents in “Woo(din)ville.” www.eteammagazine.com
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M Training for Baseball and Life 12
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Most of the kids that come to the batting cages at the Northshore Sports Complex are never going to be in “The Show,” as professional baseball players call the major leagues. Likely only a minority of them will even get a letterman jacket from their high school baseball teams. But all of them will take something away from the lessons they learn from baseball coach and co-owner Chris Schuchart. Things that will last them a lifetime – dedication, pride and a sense of what it takes to succeed at whatever goals they set themselves. “You can achieve anything if you work at it,” Schuchart said is the main lesson he hopes to get across. “My goal for all these teams that I help is just, give it all you have. Run out to your positions when it’s time to play defense. Hustle off the field when you make an out. Never have a bad attitude.” Now in its sixth year, Northshore moved last year from the original location they shared with Dotty Heberling’s sister and brother-in-law’s gymnastics center to an expanded 7,500 square foot space in the same business park. A dozen years ago Dotty and her relatives opened the gymnastics center as a place where their daughters could pursue the sport of their choice. Seven years ago their landlord approached them about expanding into a vacant space next door. While they had plenty of room for the gymnastics programs, both sisters had boys playing baseball and saw the open space as an opportunity to do something to benefit them, as well. “We thought, we might be able to come up with some sort of indoor facility for baseball players and that would just be really fun,” Dotty said. “We began with the thought of doing a multi-sport indoor facility. In our dreams we could have volleyball, we could have soccer, we could have all sorts of different teams that would come in and utilize the space. But the city would only permit batting cages in our location.” Undeterred, they went ahead and added the batting cages, the first step in the process that led to the current arrangement. At the same time Dotty’s son, Robbie Heberling was in little league and taking batting lessons from Chris at Dave Henderson’s ball yard in Bellevue. Dotty said she was impressed by the talent the then-20-yearold Schuchart, not just for his skill with a bat but in the way he made connections with his students. “If you talk to any of the people that have been touched by him, he’s just absolutely amazing,” Dotty said. “How he cares so much about the kids and puts so much into it and reads them so well. [He] pushes them beyond their comfort zone and then backs off, then pushes them a little bit more. In the end the kids totally admire him and respect him because he’s one of those kind of people who shows you that you can do more than you ever thought you could.” She asked the young baseball instructor to help them design the baseball section of their sports facility and invited him to begin giving classes there once they were up and running. Chris Schuchart designed
By Manny Frishberg
the indoor baseball facility complete with the innovation of four retractable batting cages. “The idea was we’d have four cages and we cold push them back, then we’d have an infield area. Teams could rent out the whole space and it could be used for different activities,” Dotty said. “The person that actually installed the cages, who does it at Safeco Field and lots of other places, later told us that those were the first retractable cages that he’d ever done. Since then he’s perfected the concept. He started giving lessons and became very popular.” A few months after they opened Craig Bishop, the coach of the Taylor Baseball team, asked if he could start lessons at the facility and they began renting out cage space for him there, as well. By this time Dotty’s daughters had moved on from gymnastics and gone off to college, but her son was still playing baseball. “I was finding myself spending more and more time over in the baseball side and just decided the time was right. I sold my interest in the gymnastics to my sister and her husband,” Dotty said “I bought all the batting cages and sold half to Chris so he would be an owner. We continued to work for two years in our facility and we decided we’d outgrown it. Last summer we signed a new lease in the same business park and moved into a brand new facility.” That partnership developed into a friendship that borders on mutual hero-worship. “She saves me – she does all the hard stuff,” Chris said. “She’s so good dealing with people – the parents and the kids, and all the phone calls and all the changes in everything. It makes it great for me to just go there and coach.” He said Dotty not only runs the business side of things and takes care of scheduling in the teams and individual players that Schuchart coaches, but even handles the schedule for the golf tournaments he enters in his spare time. Golf was something Heberling got her partner interested in as an outlet for his competitive urges and, in the few years he has been playing it, he has gone from a rank novice to a real contender. Up through high school and even into college, baseball had been the real focus of Chris Schuchart’s life. He said he would train and practice as much as seven hours a day and became good enough that he supplanted the short stop on his Spokane area high school team in his sophomore year. Then life threw him one of those curve balls that no one can hit – on his way to tell his girlfriend at the time of his new place on the team, he
was rear ended in a car accident that caused career-killing injuries to his back and shoulder. For more than a year he was rehabilitating and did not get to play in either his sophomore or junior years. As a senior he made it back onto the field and managed to hit a .400 average. He went on to start playing for a community college team in California, but in short order Chris realized that he would have to have the corrective surgeries he had been putting off for more than three years. “I just put it off and put it off, not dealing with them, then it had to be dealt with,” he said. “I ended up having two surgeries that made it impossible to try to pursue [playing baseball] anymore. When I started coaching it was really hard because I couldn’t do it anymore. I realized real quick that it was a gift that I have to be able to share how much I love and respect baseball with these kids. I see them doing the same thing. They respect it, they love it and I like to think that I’ve had a little bit to do with that. They understand that hard work does pay off. ” For Chris and Dotty, Northshore Sports Complex has become a center of their lives, not just because they love the sport but because of the community they have found growing up around it. We have people calling in and giving us the scores of the games all the time and letting us know how the kids do,” Dotty said. “All the coaches are coming in and get all their baseball questions handled. It’s just a network of coaches. People just come and hang out and everybody knows each other. It’s really fun. “Whenever we have a break we go out and watch the kids outside playing. We feel more like we’re a family than you come in, put your token in and hit a few balls,” she added. “We really feel that this facility is more about the dads coming in and the coaches coming in and working with the kids, working hard and seeing their accomplishments – the players learning to work as a team and gel as a team and be successful as a team, and to get through the slumps.” Dotty Heberling said the partners get along so well because they agree that the real goal is not just to turn out better baseball players but better people. “Just the other day,” said Chris, “I sat down with a team that I work with and I had them write down some goals that they have, academically, athletically, socially, just to help them see that you can’t do everything. You have to say, ‘This is what I want,’ whether it’s to be a baseball player or get an academic scholarship, there are some things you have to sacrifice. “You can’t do this because you say, ‘I want to play professional baseball’ or ‘I want to play college ball,’ because you just never know. You have to look at it and say, ‘When I’m a senior in high school I can look back and say I don’t have any regrets about what I did, I gave it all I had.’ Or maybe they didn’t – maybe they pursued music and they gave that all they had. I really don’t care what they had, just so long as they had passion about it and enjoy it,” he said. www.eteammagazine.com
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TEAM (The Eastside Athletic Magazine) profiles youth athletes and the sports they play in a quarterly (plus TEAM Xtra newsletters) magazine designed to shine the spotlight on these amazing kids, their coaches, parents and all the wonderful volunteers who together make up Eastside youth sports. A subscription to TEAM Magazine can benefit your local sports organizations, as $10 of every subscription will be donated to the organization/league/PTSA of your choice. A form is available below or you can subscribe online at www.eteammagazine.com.
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