Giving back to the community

For several years now, former New Iberia Senior High, LSU and pro baseball player Shane Youman has been wanting to conduct a clinic for the youth in the Teche Area in order to get them more involved in baseball and pass down a love of the game that he had.

And for several years, the idea of putting on clinic kep getting pushed to the background for a number of reasons.

Finally, Youman said to himself, I need to do this.

Saturday and Sunday, Youman’s dream of holding a baseball clinic came to fruition as the fomer major leaguer got together with a number of coaches and players and put on his clinic at Acadiana Ballpark.

“I never thought I had the time,” said Youman. “When the baseball season ended I just wanted to relax and then when you were ready to do something it was time to work out again and get ready for another season.

“I know there are no excuses but there was never really the time and secondly, I didn’t know a lot of people around here and it took me a while to come up with the names of the guys who could help me out with the camp as instructors.”

That changed as later in his career Youman had a chance to sit down and put some names together of players who could help him put on a camp.

“I started saving those names and started reaching out to them once I retired and they were more than willing to come out and help me,” said Youman. 

So the plans for the camp finally started coming together and over the weekend Youman was able to put together his first camp.

Around 40 youth players attended over the two days and received instruction from several area players including former Westgate and LSU standout Jared Mitchell, Loreauville assistant coach Jamarr Lewis; fomer NISH and UL pitcher Cody Boutte, former Houston Astro Charlton Jomerson and current big leaguer Blake Trahan, the fomer UL star currently with the Cincinnati Reds.

Broke up over two days, the camp concentrated on pitching and fielding Saturday and hitting and baserunning on Sunday.

“That what was so big about it, the fact that it was so many area guys who were involved,” said Youman. “We had Simieon Theodile, Derek Hebert, Adam Kilgore, Greg Fontenot, Kevin Vital, all local guys with a lot of valuable experience who all came back working and giving back to the community.”

While Youman had registration for the camp, he also had kids walk up as well and for him, 40 campers was a good number to work with.

“For me, it was perfect when you look at the camper to coaches we had,” he said. “You have to crawl before you walk. I was excited to have the kids out here learning about baseball from all these coaches.”

Youman said that the first camp was limited to those from 8 to 14, which was done by design in order to concentrate on teaching the younger kids the proper mechanics of the game.

He would like to one day raise the age level so that more high school kids can be a part of the camp and work with former players.

Depending on what happens, Youman said that he plans to hold the camp every year and if it proves to be successful, maybe expand it to twice a year.

“A lot is going to depend on the weather, which you see this weekend was kind of soft,” said Youman. “We plan to hold the camp in November, December and we’ll go from there.”