SILER CITY — Jordan-Matthews’ youth summer camps keep getting bigger.
The Jets started their summer break by hosting 20 campers at its youth soccer camp in late June, which then increased to 35 campers at its basketball camp a couple of weeks later, numbers that already had J-M staff — like Athletic Director Josh Harris — amped up.
But just last week, J-M shattered expectations with 75 campers — from elementary to middle schoolers — attending the Jets’ joint baseball/softball camp, nearly quadrupling the attendance of June’s soccer camp.
“That was the coolest part, just seeing the numbers, man. I was tickled to death with it,” Harris said last Friday, a day after the camp concluded. “It was really cool to see the volume of kids, just the sheer number that showed up. … I think it’s exciting. We have a lot of kids, too, and I think that gets the kids excited when there’s a bunch of people here. They get fired up.”
Harris credits most of the camp’s boom in attendance to the season, as summer is prime time for baseball/softball, with many kids engrossed in recreational and travel leagues, along with MLB games being a daily staple in millions of American homes.
However, he also said that Siler City and the surrounding areas are rich with young athletes interested in taking part in America’s pastime.
“That scene is pretty popular in the younger groups with softball and baseball,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of kids around here that play it. So I think that’s just something that really jumps out during summer is that they’re just in the mindset to play.”
The four-day camp lasted from July 19-22 and was open to rising 1st-9th graders with no cap on enrollment. There were originally 87 campers signed up, Harris said; 75 attended.
Rather than splitting up the campers by sport, the Jets decided to keep both the baseball and softball sections of the camp together, choosing only to separate them by age group when running them through “stations” — sections of the field that were designated for different drills — so they could be with other campers their own age.
In all, while Harris said a majority of campers were younger, elementary-level kids, he was excited to see a good chunk of middle schoolers in attendance.
“We had a lot of older kids, too, which was really encouraging,” Harris said. “They really showed up this week. … It’s cool to see those middle schoolers and get them on campus and be able to interact with them before they get (to Jordan-Matthews).”
Harris acted as the lead counselor for the baseball portion of the camp, while the Jets’ Holly Clark — a three-time All-Conference, All-District and All-State selection during her time at J-M from 2012 to 2016, who was recently hired as the team’s head softball coach — was in charge of softball.
In addition to Harris and Clark, there were more than two dozen volunteer counselors, consisting of about a dozen current J-M baseball/softball players and 15 coaches.
Hosting a camp of that magnitude takes a village.
“We had a big crew out there,” Harris said. “We had to adjust on Monday and go inside because of the rain, so we had to kind of organize the chaos. … It was awesome. It just adds another camp that went really well this summer for us.”
While most of the counselors had an affiliation with J-M as either a player or a coach, Harris brought in a couple that didn’t, including two — Tyler Rost, the director of player development at Duke, and Adam Wyse, the director of offensive development at Campbell — with plenty of baseball experience.
Rost and Wyse worked with Harris during his time at Pfeiffer University and had built a relationship with him over the last few years. So when Harris asked them to visit Siler City for this year’s camp, they didn’t turn it down.
“Most college coaches are always looking to grow the game,” Rost said. “So if we get a chance to give back to local communities and inspire young baseball players to continue playing the game and develop a love for the game, we’ll jump at that any chance we can get.”
Both coaches are well-versed in developing young players and preparing them for a Division I college experience, through on-field education and data-driven analysis.
At camp, however, their main goal was to answer questions, provide encouragement and bestow their baseball wisdom upon the campers.
Each of them spent one day at the Jets’ camp, with Wyse taking Wednesday and Rost Thursday. Each of them made their time count. Plus, the campers were locked in (and enjoying themselves).
“You can just see the passion for the game,” Wyse said. “The level of passion doesn’t change. Obviously, the guys at Campbell are more talented, but when you see people on the baseball field, they’re there to have fun. Whether that’s at Campbell, in the big leagues or at J-M, baseball fields are meant for people to have fun. They were working hard, they’re out there trying, but at the end of the day, they’re having fun.”
Before each of their days, Wyse and Rost took about 20 minutes to speak to the campers about a variety of topics, primarily focusing on having mental toughness, learning some of the game’s most basic fundamentals and giving it your all in the classroom.
“If you want to play baseball at Duke University, you have to be really good in the classroom, so just telling kids ‘Don’t overlook your homework, don’t overlook your grades,’” Rost said. “And I also told them that we recruit people who have high character. Obviously you have to be talented on the baseball field, but we try to recruit really awesome people, too.”
“That’s a pretty unique thing for our kids … I mean, what other youth camp at a high school around has Division I coaches coming to it?” Harris added. “After (Wyse and Rost) left, they were like, ‘Man, y’all have some energetic kids, they’re having fun out there,’ so that’s pretty rare, too, for kids at a camp to be complimented like that. It speaks a lot to the kids in our community.”
The turnout of last week’s baseball/softball camp is encouraging for the Jets, who are in the midst of hosting their first-ever large group of youth camps, according to Harris. This was the first baseball camp since Harris’ tenure as a J-M coach six years ago.
J-M finished out its summer camp schedule this week, with football and volleyball camps taking place from July 26-29.
If this year’s positive reception of the camps is any indication, this won’t be the last time the Jets put on a batch of them. They’re just getting started.
“We’re going to make them bigger and better,” Harris said. “This is a learning experience for us. We’ve seen things in each camp that we could improve on, so that’s kind of our goal for next summer is to push the marketing a little more to really get the word out there and just improve the camp itself in any way we can. … Most all the feedback we’ve gotten has been really positive. … I think our camps are just going to take off.”
Reporter Victor Hensley can be reached at vhensley@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @Frezeal33.