It recently occured to me that this coming summer is going to basically be my son's last opportunity to be seen by college coaches....and he's just a junior, still 16 for another two months, still hasn't added any 'man-bulk'.....but can cruise in the low 80s with what many others describe as a great curveball. He has grown UP, however, and is about 6'1" now. He was 5'6" when I first joined HSBBW!!
The reason this summer is so crucial for us is that (hate to sound like a broken record for those of you who already know the story)...I work in Seoul, Korea. We do have a HS baseball program over here, and the coach is a guy who played D1 and was drafted by the Astros, from Florida (Boe Roberts, if any of you Floridians might know him from back in the day)...so we have been fortunate. Before him we had a coach who'd grown up in NYC and had been drafted by the Yankees out of HS. Then we had an assistant who'd played at Norfolk State and had been drafted as well.......so it's been pretty nice having the influence of these guys on my son.
BUT....I worry because after this summer, he won't have exposure to anyone else at all during his whole senior year back over here. And of course it will be too late to make a showing his senior summer. Being that we have so much planning and prep to do to shuffle him out of Korea to wherever he ends up (you wanna make my wife cry, just bring this subject up.....it's going to be HARD to send him halfway around the world to school....time to leave this job perhaps??!!), we really need to be locked down by about this time next year.
So...he's on a very good team coming up (Seattle A's) which travels quite a bit and has a coach who works very hard to help all his JR players find a college baseball home, and has been successful doing this. He's also been invited into the Stanford Camp in July. Wanted to do our 4th PG event, but just can't fit it into the tight schedule this year.
I just hope some coach, somewhere along the line between mid-June and first week of August looks at him and says, "Okay, this kid just turned 17. He's skinny as a blade of straw, but has some height. He's throwing low-mid 80s with a nasty breaker, good life on the 2-seamer, and a respectable change. Looking a couple years down the road, after getting this kid into our weight room and with our coaches, he's going to be someone who can definitely help us out. And he's a strong student, too. Worth a chance."
I guess I'm looking for answers on how likely this scenario might be.......do college coaches want recruits who are already physically mature, or DO they often try to look down the road a year or two? Will they check his birthdate to see that he's a 'young' '08 and that there's still much more growth to come?
It just bums me out that he's throwing 83-84 now as a 16 year old junior....but a year from now, as a 17 year old senior, may well be hitting upper 80s.....but displaying this to the few fans that come out for our games over here....with no exposure otherwise after this summer........We'd ship him off to a mid-Winter showcase, but with college coming up we can't afford that trans-Pacific airfare at that time of year.....
Well, this is just something I wanted to get off my chest. I have no 'baseball dad' outlets over here to share these things with either!!
Hopefully this summer will be everything he hopes it to be and someone will take note.......that's all we can hope for!!
KRAK
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