Kyle is the founder/director of West Coast Kings baseball, as well as the Varsity Pitching Coach for College Park High School in Pleasant Hill. He’s been in the youth/HS baseball game for a decade, after a professional playing career and 4 years of college coaching at DVC. Kyle is well connected in the bay area and beyond, and has helped place many athletes into college baseball programs.
We caught up on several topics - Covid, the high school season, out of state opportunities, & what youth baseball could look like in 2021.
First - Covid. With the state finally putting out guidance for youth sports on Dec 14, which I wrote about in this article, it’s been made clear that competitions won’t resume until we are back in the Red Tier. Based on recent history and the current double spike, my most optimistic guess for getting there will be 10 weeks out from now, which puts us mid-March (when the updated High School seasons are supposed to start anyway). Of course there can (and probably will) be setbacks, so getting excited to get back on the field that early in the spring is probably not in anyone’s best interest.
Kyle brought up a good point related to High School sports in ‘what happens when a player tests positive?’ Inevitably games will need to be canceled, and there won’t be time at the end of the season to make them up. The CIF has already stated that there won’t be playoffs for sports this spring as well. So there is a realistic scenario that, if a season does get underway, several teams may only playing 50% of their games due to Covid cancellations (similar to what happened with Cal Football). But at this point, any games at all would be a good thing.
One likely option for spring sports at the high school level would be scrimmages within the program in order to limit group mixing, travel, etc. This scenario also comes into play at the youth level. Travel programs will start off by scrimmaging amongst themselves, as many of them including Ballplayers and Kings did last summer/fall. Pony & Little League programs will do the same thing (all 13/14 players will play amongst themselves, same for 11/12, 9/10 etc). Informal scrimmages certainly leave a lot to be desired, but they are better than nothing!
We also discussed how things have been handled in different states throughout the Covid era. Several states, like Arizona, Texas and Florida, have remained open throughout. Others like Nevada, Oregon and Utah have been on and off regarding hosting games and tournaments. There are tournament providers that will go to great lengths to host tournaments and keep the money flowing in, so there inevitably will always be a draw for some people to travel and take on some risk and play. But there are many others who aren’t willing or able to go out of state, for many good reasons.
Ultimately, where Kyle and I are united in focusing on, is continuing to provide opportunities for our local athletes and finding ways to solicit competitive environments, which everyone has missed out on so much over the past 9 months. Kids thrive on competition, not mundane practice. Kyle has found more ways to get players into competitive games and scrimmages during Covid than probably anyone in Northern California.
Kyle manages 8 teams within the Kings program, as well as dozens of players across the Freshman, JV and Varsity programs at College Park, Northgate and De La Salle Programs. There is a lot on the line to coordinate, schedule and adapt to the evolving dynamics. This is hard enough during ‘normal’ years, so I tip my hat to Kyle for staying nimble and making things happen!