Pine High School held its annual baseball camp in early June and taught the participants different skills used in the sport.

They have held the clinic for the last eight or nine years.

“We had a good turnout this year,” Pine coach Blake Dillon said. “We’ve got 48 campers and we’ve got 16 current players helping with the camp. We’ve got my assistant coaches Jason McKenzie and Blake McGehee also helping out. They’re doing a great job of making sure everything stays organized and making sure all of the kids have fun. It’s the most important thing. We want them to have fun to grow their love of baseball while they’re at camp.

“We don’t want to do anything to discourage them or make them feel like it’s not a game they want to very well play in. We just want them to all have fun and all come out and say they enjoyed Raider Baseball Camp.”

The campers ranged from ages 5 to 14 and Dillon said they are all doing the same drills that Pine will do during its high school season.

“A lot of these kids will eventually come to us,” Dillon said. “There are a lot of kids from Thomas Elementary that will one day eventually play in our program. We’d like to see their abilities when they’re young and how much they grow throughout their time in school.”

Dillon said they have participants that started at camp when they were five and now they are 10 and 11 years old.

“You can see how much they’ve grown each year and how much they’ve devoted themself to getting better when they’re away from camp through their little leagues and their travel ball and working with their parents and hitting coaches, pitching coaches, that they’re devoted and that shows them coming to camp each year. That they love the game and that they want to be good one day,” Dillon said.