Real ambassadors for baseball in DC

5/8/2017

May 8, 2017

By: DCGrays.com Press

WASHINGTON D.C., under a mission and vision to help develop youth baseball in the District of Columbia, the Grays organization has been dedicated to providing equipment, clinics, camps, and many other resources to youth in the city who are both under-served and come from low to moderate income levels. One of the main outreach efforts by the organization began a few years ago when Chris Spera, VP of Baseball Operations for the Grays, took a special interest in a youth team located literally a shagged fly ball away from the Nationals Youth Academy (where the DC Grays Collegiate team plays).

The Sousa Middle School baseball team became and adopted program for the organization when Spera simply did what he always does so naturally…..help out! Since the adoption the Grays have helped the Sousa team with equipment, apparel, and some training as well. The Sousa team is only one piece to the machine that the Grays organization is building in Wards 7 and 8 of the city primarily and intended to spread across town as well. These areas of the city see the least amount of youth baseball/softball programs develop but that has changed and picked up some steam the past few years due to the efforts of the Grays organization along with some community partners.

Another program growing rapidly for the organization is the fairly new DC Grays RBI youth program which is sanctioned by Major League Baseball. In just one full year the Grays RBI program consist of several 15U and 18U baseball/softball tournament teams in which the selection tryouts or “Qulaifiers” in order to select the 15-man roster for each team has an average turn out range of 50-60 players. Throughout this past winter and early spring the organization held free “Saturday Workouts” in order to help youth get ready for the spring/summer baseball season. Attendance was on average 20-25 players each week which was an excellent turn out for the workouts. This past weekend the Grays RBI program continued it’s tournament teams selection process with it’s second of three “Qualifier” tryouts.

Here is a short clip and some great images from this past weekend’s qualifier: