The Esperanza baseball team has been around since 1986,The team has made it to League Champions from 1986-2016, recently the Varsity team has gained a new head coach and we can’t wait to see what he has to offer to the Esperanza baseball team!!

The Esperanza baseball team always take the time to take great care of their field before they start they start their day of practice, they start by dragging the field (Going over the dirt with a tractor or ATV with a steel drag mat being pulled behind it) to level out the dirt and make it easier  for the players to have a better grip on the dirt, this simple process of going over the dirt with the steel drag mat and manually going over it once more with rakes help prevent accidents such as tripping and sliding from ever happening during a practice or game,Their Coach (Coach Ayala), has stated “If you take care of the field, the field will take care of you”, this means that if you take great care of your field, the field will be ideal for you and your team that play on it, they do this same process with the pitchers mount and the home base

The team does this all on a daily bassist to insure that their field is ready to play on at all time that are needed

The Varsity baseball team has recently gained a new coach this season, Coach Ayala has been give a warm welcome from Esperanza and his team of player, Mr.Ayala has shown pride in his work through all the teams he’s coach and the one he is coaching now, Mr.Ayala has gained the respect from his players and fellow staff members in the short time that he has been at Esperanza, Coach Ayala was approved from the board of education for his long time in physical education through out schools, he brings over 20 years of coaching experience to the Esperanza varsity baseball team and he has taken part in 4 league championships and a CIF Division 1 final, he was head varsity coach at la Quinta, Westminster, and Magnolia high school,  He has had the great honor of knowing that 8 of his former players he coached back then have been giving the chance to be drafted by professional baseball teams, Mr.Ayala has shown dedication and joy in his players, and he has great plans for the future of the team

The Varsity players take a moment before starting practice to play catch as a warm up before running their drills, this can insure accuracy and efficiency before they begin to get into harder exercises, the coach has the team run grounder drills, this helps the players know to not wait for the ball to come to them and instead, advance to the ball as it rolls towards them to improve speed in their performance, he keeps one of his catchers next to him at the home plate to rebound hit balls and to also reenact situations like a ball being hit straight up in the air, or a runner gunning for a score, he places 2 players on 1st, 2nd, and 3rd base, the players are hit ground balls while the coach yells out a base number which tells them that a runner is advancing to the plate they called out, and that they should quickly grab the ball and throw it to the desired plate, this exercise trains reaction time and throwing with accuracy.

These positions aren’t the only areas they train, they also train their batting skills, they are able to do this different ways by hitting pop fly balls to their team mates in the out field, or they can hit balls in a batting cage, the batting cage is a important part of a teams practice, they can practice by hitting a ball on a tee and or using a pitching machine, the pitching machine flings the ball towards the batter at a high speed to mimic another teams pitcher throwing, it helps with the players reaction time and timing, it seems easy enough to just hit a ball with a bat and call it a day but it isn’t what you think, it takes skill for baseball players to hit a high speed baseball with control and accuracy, if they hit the ball improperly, it can be sent flying above them, to far to the right of them, to far left, or just shy from hitting it at all, the work that it takes for a player to hit the ball in general is great, most new players to baseball know the struggle of training the hand eye coordination to be able to hit the ball with a thin bat, but these players have already been through the training of hand eye coordination, so we don’t have to worry about them missing the ball too much.

The use of batting cages don’t limit to batting, the team also uses it to practice pitching and catching skills, there are many uses to a batting cages that doesn’t just have to spot at batting. It was a great honor to see the team in person and I can’t wait to work with them more some day soon!, thank you to the Esperanza varsity players for the friendly welcome and a big thank you to Coach Ayala for making this all possible!.