Monday, February 9, 2004

Another Saturday of training completed

By Gavin Anderson
Training Director

BELLEVUE--Another big Saturday is in the books. College, A, C and 1st Year umpires participated in a full day of activities last Saturday--and the weather decided to cooperate this time.

College and A-Tier umpires were involved in field and cage training in the morning session. Instructors Anderson, Thomas and Leetz led cage instruction, while Instructors Muchlinski, Williams, Johnson and Coy were on the field trying to get everyone involved.

Chris Thomas makes a point to College and A Tier umpires on the practice field.

Chris Thomas addresses A Tier umpires at Eastside Catholic

C-Tier and 1st year umpires were in the classroom in the morning fine tuning their knowledge of the two-man system with instructor Erik Nilson.

By afternoon, the sun decided to make a few brief--but welcome--appearances as the C-Tier and 1st year umpires were able to go outside and learn more about umpiring behind the plate. Instructors Muchlinski, Thomas and Koehler were in the cages, with Instructors Anderson, Nilson and Johnson on the field with the other half of those umpires.

John Fahey works on his plate mechanics

The A-Tier had various lectures in the afternoon, held in the Eastside Catholic cafeteria. Instructors Leetz and Coy went over some situations, and good tactics on how to defuse them. They also covered incident reports and how to properly write them.

The day concluded with a wrap-up, with all umpires involved, back in the cafeteria. The A-Tier, C and 1st year umpires were all praised for their hard work and dedication to the success of the NBUA Training program.

Mike Muchlinski addresses a full group of A, C and 1st Year umpires following a full day of training.

Here is the attendance breakdown by tier from Saturday, February 7.

Only 11 of 20 College umpires actively participated in Saturday's training from 9-12 p.m. Of those 11 only three were non-instructors. Thanks to Chuck McQuery, Bob Farrell and Greg Chafe for making time for training and participating in the drills.

A-Tier attendance was 23 of 39 members at that level.

22 of the 32 1st Year umpires attended Saturday.

20 of 50 dues paying C-Tier umpires attended Saturday.

Special thanks to those B umpires that attended extra training: Dahl, Kebely, Martin and McKinley.

Photos by Richard Leetz