Camp brings baseball to Native American youth in Arizona

Native American reservation baseball was once far totally different than it was on a sunny Saturday close to Phoenix.

It’s straightforward for Robert Miguel to look again on the outdated days. He’s now chairman for the Ak-Chin Indian Community, certainly one of 22 Arizona tribes. He grew up with the Tohono O’odham Nation and would lay in mattress at night time as a child throwing a baseball up and catching it so many occasions, he might shut his eyes and really feel when the ball was on its method down.

Long earlier than he had unsuccessful tryouts with the Cincinnati Reds and Chicago Cubs, Miguel had his personal method of studying fundamentals.

Surrounded by miles of open desert, a younger Miguel would refine his hand-eye coordination by hitting rocks with a stick. “Chalk” strains on a makeshift infield got here from government-issued powdered milk, and bases got here within the type of both cow chips or empty beer containers.

“When I was doing that, [baseball] grew on me,” he mentioned. “And I would watch baseball with my grandfather. We would watch The Big Red Machine, the Cincinnati Reds. So I fell in love by just watching.”

Nike’s N7 program has supplied new alternatives. A camp for 250 children occurred at Salt River High School within the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community, a sovereign neighborhood bounded by the cities of Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa and Fountain Hills.

Nike is targeted on getting youth in North American Indigenous communities transferring via the N7 Fund. Since its creation in 2009, the Nike N7 Fund has awarded over $8 million in grants to greater than 270 communities and organizations.

Watching children undergo fielding, catching and hitting reps regarded all too acquainted for Jacoby Ellsbury. As the primary Native American of Navajo descent to play Major League Baseball, Ellsbury was an All-Star, Gold Glove and Silver Slugger winner, two-time World Series champion with the Boston Red Sox and MVP runner-up.

“It brings back memories for me on the baseball field and being a kid and having fun. That’s what N7 is all about, activity through sports,” Ellsbury mentioned whereas watching the children undergo drills.

The Valley of the Sun has been busy this week with high-profile sports activities occasions, and N7 has been proper there for every. Just a couple of days earlier, N7 hosted a soccer camp in tandem with Super Bowl 57 throughout city and likewise a golf camp in step with the Phoenix Open in close by Scottsdale.

With pitchers and catchers having simply reported for Spring Training, tons of of plastic bats and balls helped flip N7’s focus to baseball. There had been batting nets for observe swings, cones for operating drills and naturally shirts and footwear for the campers, plus a nutritious lunch afterward.

“Childhood obesity unfortunately is becoming high among the Native youth. So get them out, have fun and challenge them,” Ellsbury mentioned. “Have them do something they never have done.”

While lots of the children have by no means performed organized baseball or softball, some have. Some have already got desires, not in contrast to Miguel’s. Ten-year-old Marco Lopez was carrying his Arizona Diamondbacks cap whereas taking every kind of batting swings and flatly mentioned his dream is to succeed in Major League Baseball sometime, amongst different leagues.

“NBA and NFL. All of them,” he mentioned. “We’ll see what I go to.”

Others will not be reaching for a profession in skilled sports activities, however the thought of setting objectives and dealing to attain them was not misplaced on some campers.

“I know that as a hobby you must have practice. So I think it’s a very good learning experience for a lot of people,” mentioned Zariah Miles, 13.

Miguel used classes he discovered to show the children. Fate might not have had him attain his aim of enjoying professional baseball, however he did comply with within the footsteps of his grandfather, Jonas, who additionally served as Ak-Chin Indian Community chairman within the early Seventies. Family is a vital theme for Miguel.

“What means so much to these kids is that somebody’s paying attention to them. Not just Jacoby but the [N7] staff, showing an interest in their growth in life. That means so much,” he mentioned. “A lot of these kids here, I can guarantee, they’ve grown up in broken homes and with a number of negative dilemmas in their lives.”

The Gila River Indian Community, Ak-Chin Indian Community, Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community and the Tohono O’odham Nation are “sister tribes” right here within the Valley. Miguel, the Salt River president and the Gila River governor all grew up collectively enjoying baseball, from T-ball and Little League.

“We share the same traditions and cultures, and our language is almost identical,” Miguel mentioned. “For a lot of us growing up, baseball was not a game. It was life.”