Age group focus at upcoming softball camp with All-Star profs recruited to teach the ABCs
June 19, 2024 at 11:27 p.m.
The future is now, or almost now, and the crystal ball is focused on what it takes for local ballers to win. Especially the Lady Rams softball team.
That's the idea behind an upcoming 5-day intensive softball learning camp that starts July 1 and is scheduled to run through July 5 on the Port Chester High School softball field.
It will be a softball university of sorts—the accent on the U because the "professors" will work with various student-athlete age groups starting with 5 and under while going all the way up to high school ballers.
Classes for the ages
Their "classes" will include three age group categories—3-5, 6-8 and 9-12.
Their "curriculum" will focus on what it takes to become a winner. And the underlying lesson plans will include putting the fun in fundamentals by studying hard to master the essentials of the game from the get- go.
Brooklyn Ostrowski, one of the greatest female athletes in Port Chester High School history who is now playing softball for the Villanova Wildcats, is one of the three who will be teaching softball skills to girls from 3 to 12 the first week in July.Courtesy of Villanova Softball
The "teachers" will use bats and balls instead of textbooks and exams.
And the message they will try to get across includes the importance of performing well in and out of the classroom as well as on the field.
The winning lineup
They will get their message across with the know-how that comes from having walked the walk as well as talked the talk while winning at the highest levels as collegiate ballers and coaches.
The "faculty" dean is Lady Rams varsity coach Jeanine Maiolini, who played for nationally ranked Hofstra University and has worked long and hard for more than a decade to make Port Chester Lady Rams softball a local power.
And Maiolini has recruited an All-Star professorial coaching trio that has walked the walk, been there, done that and that too to help make the Lady Rams even better after a record turnout of more than 40 candidates for the varsity this past season.
The incoming camp "lecturers" include:
*Four-time collegiate All-America Scholar-Athlete Meghan Giordano, an assistant softball coach at Hofstra.
*Big East All-Star student-athlete and Port Chester's own Brooklyn Ostrowski, an athletic scholarship outfielder at Villanova who hit a home run as a pinch hitter in her first college at bat and was on the team that won the Wildcats’ first Big 10 championship and made it into the collegiate World Series playoffs this year.
*Christine Moran, another former Hofstra softball standout who is now head softball coach at Wantagh High School, a perennial Long Island championship contender.
Baller ABCs cram course
Maiolini will run the softball camp along with the three imported former and present Division 1 ultra-competitive college players and coaches acting as counselors who will participate in the Port Chester Recreation Department summer softball camp.
Their goal is to give a cram course in the softball ABCs so those letters spell out better days ahead for the Lady Rams. Especially against the area's better teams.
The Port Chester Middle School modified softball team which had a successful 2024 season, winning its last four games against Sleepy Hollow, Edgemont, Ursuline and Peekskill.Courtesy of Gabriela Delgado
The "sessions" will run Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with participants expected to bring their own lunch for a food break.
"What Port Chester softball really needs right now is what Port Chester doesn't have—an organized softball program similar to the Port Chester Youth Baseball League with its summer and fall age-group programs including lots of games and coaching, fast-paced travel team age-group competition against teams from outside the area, and year-round instructional workshops," according to Maiolini, the Port Chester coach who has turned around a losing Lady Rams softball culture but wants to keep making it better.
As a former Carmel All-League infielder who went on to play ball for ultra-competitive Hofstra University, she knows what that is going to take. And she sees the upcoming camp is a step in the right direction because she has imported three dedicated ballers with extensive competitive college-playing experience to work with her.
Work to play formula
They all have played the game at the highest collegiate level. And understand what it takes to get there: work, work, work, year-round hard work. That work includes attention to detail and mastering the fundamentals until they become as natural as breathing. And that takes dedication, drive, desire and support at every level, including family, school and community.
Those are the lessons they will try to impart at different training stations located in the on-field classrooms where they will teach hitting, fielding, base-running, pitching and more.
That more will include getting the younger generation to understand an essential lesson: that talent helps, but hard work beats talent that doesn't work.
Their mission is to get that lesson across to future Lady Ram varsity ballers like the current Middle School Mod Squad that won its last four games while beating teams like Sleepy Hollow, Edgemont, Ursuline and Peekskill. Their coaching goal is to keep that winning feeling going by teaching the Mod Squad and the local age group kids like them the skills, techniques and strategies that will take them to the next level. And they want to do that without taking the joy of the game out of them. They will drill them on what it will take to win at the next level when they go up against the area's more competitive year-round programs.
Maybe they can even get more girls to play baseball in the PCYBL like Brooklyn Ostrowski did, with BK, as she is called, going on to become one of the greatest female athletes in Port Chester scholastic sports history. BK is quick to acknowledge she couldn't have accomplished anything without extensive familial support and encouragement so she could become a Lady Ram, play elite travel team ball off-season, get special hitting instruction and overcome all kinds of adversity (she pulled shoulder muscles while lunging for a high pitch during a travel team game in Lake Placid that required extensive rehab). And she wants to pay that kind of help forward.
The kids need to hear inspirational stories like that to help motivate them. Especially from one of their own. And that's what the camp will give them.
That will have to suffice for now. Or at least until they get a softball league of their own.
What it takes to camp
But until that happens—and Maiolini has been asking for that kind of local off-season softball program for years now to no avail—the upcoming intensive softball camp is the next best thing.
But that kind of instruction doesn't come cheap: Camp costs $500 with discounts available for siblings.
Contact Maiolini for further information (including registration forms that must include name, age, address, cell phone number, school attended, medical clearance and waivers) at [email protected], phone: 914: 323-8895. Checks should be made out to her and sent to her at 23 Boniello Drive, Mahopac, NY 10541. Registration will also take place on the first day of camp with payment due at that time.
Consider it a down payment on the Lady Rams’ softball future with its value to the potential varsity ballers priceless. Especially if they can come up with a windmilling pitcher or two so they can be at their best when the next fast-pitch scholastic softball season rolls around.
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