Excitement growing for baseball academy at St. Joseph High

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“We’ll be following the long-term athlete development programs (of Baseball and Softball Canada). We want to bring daily high-quality instruction to support baseball and softball players in reaching their full potential in a game that they love.”

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At first, the academy will have two cohorts of up to 24 players each, along with a middle school program operated out of St. Thomas Aquinas.

Borcher says the academy wouldn’t be at the point it is today without valuable guidance from both Red Deer Rage Fastball and Red Deer Minor Baseball.

RDMB Vice President of Baseball Operations Randy Gehring says when he heard last fall that there was going to be an academy, he was ecstatic.

“We’ve been hoping to get something in the area for quite some time and Red Deer Minor Baseball has been fairly active in pursuing it,” he points out. “We’ve wanted something for quite some time to keep kids in the area because a lot of them are going out of town for offseason training, and we’ve always thought that with the people around and the facilities we have, it should be feasible to keep them around here.”

Gehring says the more times a kid can swing a bat, throw or field a ball, it will ultimately make local players better and Red Deer Minor Baseball teams more competitive.

“It would always be our hope that any kid in Red Deer that wanted to play baseball, we would find a place for them and they would not be turned away,” he adds. “The kids who are not getting those repetitions in who are going out of town are doing so at a considerable cost.”

It’s also been announced the man at the helm of the academy will be Scott Murray, a graduate of Red Deer Minor Baseball, and former player and GM of the Red Deer Riggers. He is also currently a coach with Red Deer Minor Baseball and the Red Deer Rage. A coach/teacher is expected to be hired in the coming weeks.

Registration for the baseball and softball academy is open until March 1. It is open to all baseball and softball players in Red Deer and central Alberta, meaning you don’t have to be a student at St. Joseph High to enroll. 

More details are at StJosephHigh.ca.