Quitman School District is proudly preparing for the start of its first Junior Panthers Baseball program.
The program is designed for kids in grades two through six to teach them how to play baseball or just sharpen their skills. It will begin the first Monday in October and last all the way through the month of October. If there is a good turnout for the program, then it will continue on until the kids are let out for Thanksgiving break. Each session will be from 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Best of all, the program is free!
The baseball program believes in working in the community and wants to make sure that kids are able to be involved.
“We want to offer something to our community to get our kids involved in something. We aren’t looking for kids talent-wise. We’re looking to teach them and help them. It’s free of charge because we wanted to make sure that it was something that would be available to everyone in the community. We’ve had people reach out from Meridian, Quitman, Enterprise, and even Waynesboro about people bringing their children up,” explained Head Baseball Coach Eric Johnson. “We’ll teach them how to catch a ground ball, how to catch a fly ball, the proper way to throw, and all the little things in baseball that we sometimes forget. We’ll change things up each week, but it will always cover the everyday fundamentals of baseball, like ground balls, fly balls, hitting, and understanding the base running.”
There will be plenty of people to coach the kids who attend, and there are plans to bring in guest speakers who can supply them with valuable information and help as well.
“We’re going to break down the different age groups, and we’ll have a coach at each station working with them and doing different things. There will be times that we’ll have some guys I’ve coached in the past who’ve gone on to play pro ball come in some nights to talk to them and work with us on it,” described Coach Johnson. “It’ll be a different variety of coaching, but it will be our staff, our players, and then maybe a college coach or someone who plays pro ball to come help us.”
Unlike other programs, there is no set amount of times that participants are required to attend. They are able to pick and choose how many times they would like to go, whether it is attending all of the sessions or only a few.
“There is no registration. You are able to just pull up and drop your child off. The first time the child comes, you will have to sign a form acknowledging that we are not responsible if the child is injured,” expressed Coach Johnson. “They don’t have to come every Monday if they don’t want to. We may have a different group every Monday. It’s not set so that you have to come every Monday. It’s up to the parents how many times the kids come because we will be here every Monday from 6 p.m. – 7 p.m. as long as we’re getting enough participation. We will shut it down the week we get out for Thanksgiving, but we will start the first Monday in October and go as long as we see we’re making a difference in the community for our kids.”
The coach hopes that the Junior Panther Baseball program will help instill a love a baseball in the children and inspire them to join the baseball team when they are old enough to try out.
“We want to be able to keep kids in our district. The ones who attend will already have that relationship built with me and the coaching staff. When they do come to tryouts in junior high, they already know the coaching staff because they’ve been in the program already. That’s why we’re calling it our Junior Pack of Panthers,” informed Coach Johnson. “Our feeder programs are really important. When kids are in that age between second grade and seventh grade, they’re trying to figure out which direction they want to go in school and what sports they may want to play. We want to offer them baseball and help them learn baseball so that when they become seventh graders, they’ll already know what to expect from us. We’re going to teach them and continue to teach them, and we’ll even show them some of the things we show our high schoolers.”
The coach and his team are hoping for a strong turnout and look forward to working with and training up future Quitman Panthers with the Junior Panther program.
