Offseason? Yeah, right: Young athletes seek out-of-season instruction

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By Andrew Petersen | Friday, July 04, 2008 |

Elisa Petersen/QUAD-CITY TIMES Gary Thrapp, who runs Beyond the Baseline at his Field House Sports Complex, looks on as Kaylee Taylor, 9, leaps for a rebound during a basketball skills camp. Thrapp hosts camps, practices and tournaments at the Davenport facility. Buy this Photo

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Almost 20 years after his baseball playing career ended, Tim Gronski’s spring and summer months are still busy.

But over the past decade, his winter calendar has grown more hectic.

“I played in an era where even offseason weightlifting was taboo,” Gronski said. “There weren’t open gyms, and a couple of batting cages were starting to open up.”

These days, Gronski works with athletes at his Sandlot Baseball Center in Moline from September through March. That’s in addition to his job as an economics teacher at Moline High School.

For all the time he dedicates, Gronski’s commitment is by no means rare. His clients are equally invested, as are an assortment of other “skills” coaches that have set up similar shops around the Quad-Cities.

The emphasis is personalized instruction for a particular sport. More and more of this generation’s athletes use in-season competition to implement all they’ve absorbed in the seemingly ill-named offseason.

Gary Thrapp purchased The Field House Sports Complex in Davenport with that goal in mind. Through his Beyond the Baseline programs, Thrapp aims to create opportunity.

“The premier athlete is a minority, maybe the top five percent of kids,” he said. “Those kids are almost in another league. The kid who doesn’t have as much talent has a choice.

“They can choose to wait for school sports to start and maybe not be as good. Or they can try to outwork the other kids.”

That is why Thrapp’s business hosted competition between some 500 youth basketball and volleyball teams between October and March.

And when Thrapp emphasizes the relative unimportance of winning those games, he means it.

The objective is skill development, and it’s no longer viewed as an activity for a minority group of overly ambitious parents and children. Changing perceptions have transformed the thirst for individual, or at least small-group attention.

Often, the instructors are learning on the go.

“Ten or 20 years ago, you touched the ball you were playing with at your first practice of the season,” Thrapp said. “You didn’t do this. When one season was done, you went on to the next sport.”

New thinking sees more value in honing your batting stance or smoothing out your jump shot.

“I think it’s helped me a lot,” Bettendorf pitcher Sam Hershberger said. “There’s a lot of kids on the high school team that get individual instruction.

“I think it will continue to gain in popularity.”

Perhaps out of necessity.

When Jim Pransky, a talent scout for Major League Baseball, opened the Sandlot in 1999, he wouldn’t train anyone under age 12. In the past couple years, though, Gronski said he’s had kids as young as 6.

Thrapp instructs kids as young as 4 and 5 in the pre-kindergarten “My First Basketball League.”

“You can see this as good or bad,” he said. “These days, if kids aren’t starting to develop proper habits at an early age, they’re at a disadvantage when they do start.”

That might sound discouraging, but Thrapp insisted private coaching isn’t a prerequisite for involvement in youth sports.

“It can be as simple as going out with your own kids and shooting a basketball or playing catch,” he said. “Your kid does not need individual instruction to develop skills. Down the road, that may help, but the biggest thing is getting the parents involved early.”

Whatever the perspective, there’s a lot more riding on that game of H.O.R.S.E. in the driveway than ever before.

Andrew Petersen can be contacted at (563) 383-2288 or apetersen@qctimes.com.