University of North Carolina Athletics
Lucas: My Week At Camp
July 30, 2010 | Baseball, Featured Writers, Adam Lucas
July 30, 2010
By Adam Lucas
I went to Carolina baseball camp this week.
Well, more accurately, my son went to Carolina baseball camp this week. In the interest of being an intrepid reporter--and because I wanted to watch baseball while pretending to work, which is basically the job description for my entire life--I tagged along.
It was my five-year-old's first experience at a baseball camp of any kind. The four-day camp, which finished Thursday, went something like this:
Introductions
Campers assemble at 9 a.m. Monday under the direction of camp director Robert Woodard. You might also know him as the winningest pitcher in Carolina history. As the counselors introduce themselves, one of Mike Fox's former players at North Carolina Wesleyan, Charlie Flowers, announces that he worked his first camp in 1987.
Flowers turns to fellow counselor Ben Bunting and asks what year the rising Tar Heel senior was born. Bunting replies, "1989." Flowers says to the crowd, "See, Ben Bunting was only two years old when I first worked camp."
Somewhere, the time-space continuum trembles.
My son, Asher, is assigned to Patrick Johnson's group, which is made up of the youngest kids in camp. I can only assume Johnson, the possible Friday night starter in 2011, drew the short straw. They are deemed the "Jackals."
Morning stations
After a group warmup, each morning session of camp features multiple stations. At least four of those stations are usually on the sweltering Boshamer field, two are in the indoor batting cages, one is in the bullpen, and one is in the air-conditioned players' lounge.
For some reason, the players' lounge always seems to be the longest rotation.
One of the stations involves the counselors smacking fly balls with a tennis racket. On Wednesday, as his campers (the Monsters, who come complete with their own team cheer) rotate to fly balls, Mike McKee announces, "OK, we've got fly balls next. I'm going to dominate you."
McKee has an Agassi-esque forehand with the tennis racket. His campers love it, because anytime they catch one of his skyscrapers it seems like a major achievement. Later, I tell him I seriously doubt I could have caught any of those fly balls. "I know!" he says. "I was thinking the same thing about me."
One of the stations also features snow cones, which are often presided over by Tyson Lusk. It is a serious challenge for Lusk to keep camp director Woodard from starting ice fights with the campers.
Lunch
If you have not spent much time in an elementary school lunchroom lately, you may not know that lunch is serious business. Because this is baseball camp, and most everything here has some element of competition, lunch is also a contest. The goal: figure out who has the coolest lunch. Oreos are a big favorite, as are vanilla wafers with peanut butter. One camper gets two cookies, and it is immediately decided that his mother intended the second one to be broken up among his teammates.
One day at lunch, I meet Max, who has traveled from Italy to Chapel Hill for camp. Max teaches me several useful Italian baseball phrases, including "Strike three," "home run," and a couple that I'll only need to use if an umpire makes a mistake.
Lunch moves indoors on Tuesday, which features six hours of hard rain. Camp director Woodard's mood mirrors the clouds as they darken. Bad weather is a camp staffer's worst nightmare. Why? Think about how restless your kids get when it's raining and they're trapped inside. Now imagine you have 87 other kids and you're going to herd them all into the Boshamer Stadium indoor batting cages.
The pre-lunch hour is spent playing dodgeball. During lunch, all the counselors ask Woodard his plans for the afternoon, which is soon to be a total washout. After lunch, the strategy becomes obvious. "OK, campers," Woodard announces. "Those dodgeball games were just practice. This is the real thing." He then unveils the bracket for a double-elimination round-robin dodgeball spectacular.
It does not rain again the rest of the week. This is good news.
Post-lunch talk
One day, the talk includes hitting instruction from Ben Bunting and Tarron Robinson (when Robinson hits the ball in the indoor batting cages, it sounds like the Fourth of July). One day, it includes some thoughts on the Carolina experience from Greg Holt and Bryant Gaines.
Thursday is a little different. On that afternoon, Flowers--an accomplished musician who taught himself to play the guitar while in the hospital following a car accident--puts on a mini-concert for the campers. One of his selections includes improvised verses from several Tar Heels, including Holt, McKee and Gaines. At one point, McKee rhymes "swing the bat" with "really good."
It rhymes about as well out loud as it does on the page.
Games
In the afternoons, as the temperature rises, I move to the press box because I am a wimp. This gives me a great vantage point as the campers split into teams and play a series of competitive games.
On Monday, Asher hits a ball down the third base line. Conservatively, I would say there are four errors on the play. However, I score it a home run and there has not been that much cheering in the press box since the Georgia Tech student radio crew was in town. Johnson observes as his Jackals do their best dogpile near home plate.
The grand finale
Camp concludes with a sliding demonstration on a tarp in the outfield, which has been converted into the world's largest slip-and-slide. Campers are required to wear helmets. Given the way they launch themselves onto the tarp, it soon becomes obvious that this is an excellent policy.
Everyone gets multiple turns, and by the time Asher finishes his fifth attempt, he is soaked, grassy and tired. He is wearing a batting helmet and a swimsuit as he wolfs down a couple huge chunks of camp-provided watermelon.
"We have to go," I tell him.
"Why?" he asks.
"Camp is over."
He ponders this for a moment.
"That's OK," he says, "as long as we get to come back next week."
Adam Lucas is the publisher of Tar Heel Monthly. He is also the author or co-author of five books on Carolina basketball, including the upcoming official chronicle of the first 100 years of Tar Heel hoops, A Century of Excellence. Get real-time UNC sports updates from the THM staff on Twitter.
