The CSUN baseball team hosted their second annual Attitude for Gratitude camp this past Saturday, a free camp for the underprivileged youth in the San Fernando Valley.
The free camp featured children from sixth to eighth grade, who got a chance to learn how a college baseball player practices and how to be a good student. They also received a baseball shirt, free dinner and met the coach and players.
“Some families simply can’t afford baseball because it’s an expensive sport,” Tei Vanderford, assistant coach, said. “So we want to keep that tradition of baseball alive in the valley, and this is a great way to do it where families can bring their kids for absolutely nothing.”
The camp was organized by former CSUN pitcher, now assistant coach, Tei Vanderford. He hopes that this camp can inspire underprivileged children to want to go to college, whether it involves baseball or not.
At this camp, the CSUN players taught the children the fundamentals of hitting, pitching and fielding with 12 different stations. After this, head coach Greg Moore gave them a campus tour and then taught them a life skills class in a classroom setting.
“We call it Diamond University,” Vanderford said about Moore’s contribution to the camp. “He gives a Diamond University talk and that’s kind of a life skills classroom setting where they go in and learn about life skills. Whether it be job interviews, how to communicate, how to be a better person, how to surround yourself with the right people to be successful in life.”
Guadalupe Vasquez brought his son, Javier, to the camp after learning about it through his son’s travel team coach. He hopes that his son can embrace what he learned and push himself to get into a university.
“More than anything it’s the connection between his drive for baseball and to aspire to come to a university,” Vasquez said. “You got to do good in sports to do good in academics. You got to do good in academics to play sports so if he can have that within the next few years as he gets into high school, that would be a good thing.”
The camp provides a way for the players to give back to their community and forge the next generation of student athletes. One of these athletes, CSUN student and redshirt junior Michael Cartwright, went to camps like this growing up and his father, Rob Cartwright, believes that they laid a solid foundation for his son to become a Division I athlete and is proud that his son can now return the favor.
“As parents, we’re proud to watch our son participate in something where he started and take those skills he learned at those camps and give it back to the community,” Cartwright said.
