The Gibsons Jays were treated to some baseball -Cuban style during a clinic in Gibsons on the May long weekend.
The two coaches from Pinar del Rio Province, Julio Pena, a physical education teacher, was a two-time provincial batting champion and member of the Canadian team that won the 35-plus division at the men's Senior World Series in Arizona last fall while Rady Dominguez taught and coached at the National Institute of Sport and was a member of the Cuban National Baseball Team in 2006.
The junior men's team learned new skills and the Cuban approach to the sport of baseball. Pena worked primarily with the team's catchers and demonstrated the enthusiastic and aggressive ways that he approaches the game. Dominguez conducted baseball-specific warm-up and fitness sessions and then worked with the pitchers.
"The Cuban coaches emphasized that a full commitment to the game is what is required in order to improve and succeed," said Jays coach Gary Pennington, who brought the players to the Coast for the clinic. "They said that youth and adults love the game in Cuba and that anyone who is not willing to practice and play the game full-on is asked to find some other activities.
They say that this is rare because of the devotion to the game that everyone feels. Few Cuban youth have the kind of equipment that our children and youth have and it is common to see kids playing ball in bare feet with old taped-up baseballs and make-shift bats.Both coaches are going to take good used equipment back with them when they return to Cuba as gifts to their youth."
Pennington said the Jays were very keen on the day and discussions took place over lunch about the possibility of a Cuban baseball tour in the spring of 2011. Both coaches said that a playing tour for the team would be very feasible and that all it awaited was fundraising of the part of the team and good preparation for the high level of competition they would encounter in Cuba. They said that they would be delighted to help arrange a tour and even coach the Canadian squad while they were on tour.
In both Lower Gibsons and Roberts Creek people on the street stopped to comment and welcome the players who wore their colourful red and white Cuban team uniforms as they enjoyed the sights as tourists after the clinic. Several onlookers thanked the coaches once their visit had been briefly explained. It seems that broader Canadian/Cuban relations were another positive outcome of the baseball visit to the Coast.
