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New Jersey Baseball Feature StoryRealizing the Dream
Baseball Biomechanicsby Frank Colabella 
The 21st century is here, where technology and science meet baseball. For years motion capture has been around for video games and the elite golfer and major league baseball players. Here a sports motion is recorded with sensors and a 3-D computer generated motion is created. This motion can pick up on flaws in the human body, which if corrected then can prevent injury and better a pitcher or hitter. Injury prevention is crucial to a young athlete’s development. Doctors nationwide are reporting a growing number of young pitchers with serious arm injuries. Most injuries are coming from inefficiencies in pitching, muscle imbalances in the body from lack of exercise, and over use which the body cannot handle. One tool elite athlete’s use is to have athletic trainers, physical therapists and team physicians evaluate who then recommend for a 3-d motion capture analysis. That term is used way too loosely in the baseball and golf industry. Many think you take a camera record the motion and the view. Analyze and compare to a major league player. Things have changed!! New Jersey Baseball Feature StoryQuiet Confidence
A graduate of Dave Gallagher’s Baseball Academy, Casey approaches his junior season with impressive credentials. In addition to playing in his District Little League tournament at age 10, he pitched for his 16 year-old, Pony League All-Star team, recording the team’s only win in the Eastern Region tournament, won a semi-final game in the Mercer County Tournament, pitched above his level on the Lawrence Senior Legion team, and became a reliable starter for his varsity baseball team when only a sophomore. He enters the Spring ’09 campaign as Notre Dame’s ace of the staff New Jersey Baseball Feature StoryBorn to Pitch
In fact, you might even say that he was born to pitch. Aside from some brief experience playing second base in Little League, he has performed as a pitcher his entire young life. It seemed to always come easy for him. He has great footsteps to follow, excellent training, consistent support from his parents, and the physical talent and mental toughness to succeed.  Rutgers Baseball Head Coach - Fred Hill SrOne Class Actby Dan Cleary PISCATAWAY, N.J—There is a certain buzz surrounding the athletic program at Rutgers University these days. The football team has gained notoriety with its emergence as a player on the national scene under Jersey native Greg Schiano. C. Vivian Stringer guided the Scarlet Knights to the NCAA Division I women’s basketball national championship game last spring, while showing dignity and class throughout the unfortunate situation involving radio personality Don Imus. But there is another coach that plies his trade at the State University of New Jersey located “On the Banks of the Raritan” that deserves just as many accolades as Schiano and Stringer, and is as Jersey as diner food and summers at The Shore. 
Fred Hill Sr., an Essex County native, has molded the Scarlet Knights into one of the top Division I programs in the nation in his 25 years at the helm, while flying under the national radar, which is probably just fine with him. “Coach Hill is one of the class acts in all of college baseball,” praised former Scarlet Knights outfielder and current New York Yankees farmhand David Williams, who played under Hill for four seasons before getting drafted by the Bronx Bombers in the 15th round of the 2007 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft. Williams, a former standout at Pope John XXIII High School in Sparta, N.J., led the BIG EAST in hitting and was ranked 17th nationally with his .412 batting average in 2007.  One Week of Baseball…
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When you think of people who have a passion for baseball in general and for youth baseball in particular, you need look no farther than Dave Wintermute and Richard Roy of Lambertville. Between them, they bring a zest to the game that youth baseball advocates everywhere may emulate.
While he does not have barnstorming stories to tell, he certainly recalls his fondest baseball memory from Little League, when he hit a game tying home run in the bottom of the 9th inning for his All-Star team. Getting that dramatic hit happened in the semi-final round of a tournament, in a game which his team eventually lost.
To be precise, Ron has a vision for Magic Sports Tournament and Health Complex, a multi-sport, tournament, training, instructional, multi-service sports and health center unlike any other. Magic Baseball, a travel team that got its start in 1999, started him thinking. But it was not until he saw Cooperstown Dreams Park (CDP) that the idea began to take shape.
What a difference a year makes. Last season at this time Head Coach Matt Sommo’s baseball program at Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC) sat in Division 3 looking to improve its record from the season before. This year the goal remains the same, only at the NJCAA Division 2 level instead.
Supply Meets Demand
To hear Coach Jimmy Hill and Coach Pete Connell tell it, you would no doubt agree that it’s a no-brainer. Training young ball players in the fundamentals of baseball, that is. New Jersey Baseball caught up with these ambitious, resourceful owners of The Fred Hill Sports Academy (FHSA) in late summer 2008.
“Miller Stadium” in West New York played host to the CERBO National Baseball League’s New 15’s “New Jersey AA Championship” game between the Garden State Gators and West New York Tigers. The two top seeded, and Division Championship, teams did not disappoint the dozens who filled the historic ballpark, as both clubs showcased their considerable talents. The Tigers were able to jump out to an early lead, and then hold on for a hard fought 8-4 victory, and the CERBO State Championship.
Carolyn Malmi has “loved baseball since she was a kid” growing up in Chicago. She played girls’ softball until she turned sixteen years-old, when she reached sophomore year of high school. She played the game well enough to earn a roster spot on the girls’ U.S. Junior Olympic team that went to Amsterdam in 2001.
Like most 17 year-olds with a passion for baseball, Anthony Sicuranza of Harrington Park, New Jersey, has dreamed of playing the game and rubbing elbows with the best of the best. He has favorite ball players whom he follows and tries to emulate, he plays third base on his community rec team, and he can recite little known facts about the game that many of us have forgotten.
He says that he remembers being a fan of baseball ever since he “saw Wade Boggs ride the horse” after the New York Yankees clinched the 1996 World Series. It was the first time the Bronx Bombers had won the series in nine years. Fittingly, Anthony was five years-old at the time.
Every so often we meet a young pitcher who embodies the best qualities of a seasoned competitor – an earnest, unrelenting presence on the mound coupled with a modest, unassuming personality. Few fit that description better than Casey Clark, a junior southpaw for Notre Dame High School in Lawrenceville, New Jersey.
You could almost say that Nick Nametko was born to play baseball. The 6’3” 230 lb. junior pitcher for Manchester High School in Ocean County has played some form of organized baseball since the age of four. That’s right, since the age of four. If he was not born, literally, to play the game, he certainly comes close to that distinction.
Just five miles south of the Village of Cooperstown, NY, home of Doubleday Field and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, you will find picturesque Cooperstown Dreams Park, home of the American Youth Baseball Hall of Fame invitational tournaments. Twelve and under baseball teams from across the United States, with some from around the world, travel to Dreams Park where they compete in week long tournaments. There are ten tournament weeks each summer with ninety-six teams participating each week. The summer culminates with weekly champions returning for the National American Tournament of Championship week.
If the major leagues represent the pinnacle of achievement for ball players, you would never know it from watching 14 year-old Stefanie Fox grace the girls’ softball fields in Mercer County, New Jersey. In addition to anchoring championship caliber recreation teams for Ewing Township at second base and shortstop, this budding star completed her second year at shortstop for the Hun School of Princeton’s Middle School team in 2008. In fact, you might say that this spring blossom has in many ways already bloomed.SPORTSMANSHIPAttitude Check List
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