CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Normally we see Veterans Memorial head baseball coach Lee Yeager teaching and coaching baseball for his high school athletes.
In the summer, you will find him teaching a much different group of athletes.
Yeager is teaching 9 to 11-year-olds at the Lee Yeager Youth Camp, something he has been holding since he took the position at Vets.
"Ever since we got to Vets we've been doing camps," said Yeager. "Just to try to identify our young kids and give back to the community."
On a humid, steamy morning in South Texas, about 20 young baseball players begin stretching inside the South Texas Xtreme Cages complex on Morgan Avenue.
These kids are here to master their baseball skills.
"If I play for them then I will know what to do," said 11-year-old camper Charlie Pompa.
"They teach me how to do stuff better," added camper Dominic Medina.
This even allows Yeager and his coaches to go back to the basics of the game. This comes after a full baseball season with players who are best in the state.
"Just getting back to those basics is really cool for us," Yeager said. "You know just throwing and catching is kind of a challenge at times."
For the campers, this camp is obviously a place to learn baseball from some of the Coastal Bend's top coaches. But in a summer where things are getting back to normal, it is becoming so much more than that.
Kids are back to summer camps with their friends after mostly missing the opportunity last year.
"I get to hang out with my friends and learn from new people," Pompa said.
And who knows, maybe this camp on a hot Corpus Christi morning is the first step towards what these youngsters hope to be a journey to big-league baseball.
"I just want to make the majors," said Medina.
