Admirals take on COVID challenges
Vacaville travel ball team has been able to play out-of-state tourneys, develop talent
Many high school baseball players keep their game sharp and showcase their skills in front of college and major league scouts by playing with travel ball teams.
But what happens to those venues during a pandemic? As high school sports have had to deal with the challenges of COVID-19, so too has the Admirals Baseball Club of Vacaville.
Dyron Rolling, the president of the team, founded the club six years ago. Rolling partnered with Vacaville Christian Schools to put together a baseball-based, volunteer-based program to help kids.
“We started off just kind of coaching kids in the neighborhood and teaching them about baseball and life,” said Rolling. “It evolved into one of the most competitive baseball programs in the country.”
The Admirals have had two graduating classes (18-year-olds) and 13 are now college athletes, 11 at Division I schools.
The team has partnered with a battered women’s shelter, the Boys and Girls Clubs, Mission Solano and other local programs. Every year the team plays a charity game at VCS.
Admission is a jacket. The team gives the jackets to local charities and churches to distribute to those in need.
The club also has three teams in Richmond, where Rolling grew up before moving to Vacaville and attending Will C. Wood, where he graduated in 1993.
The Admirals have also formed a girls softball club, with three teams in place.
“The community asked us to take on softball,” said Rolling. “I have a daughter who is an athlete, so it was tugging at my heartstrings.”
Between baseball and softball, 200 young people are part of the program. Ages range from 1018. The 16U (16-and-under) and 18U baseball teams also have a 16U-elite and 18-U elite division for the top players. Rather than play locally, the U teams travel around the country to play in tournaments in front of college and pro scouts against some of the top prospects in the country.
Rolling coaches the 18U-elite squad of which his son Kobe is a member. There are 22 coaches, all of them volunteers. The athletes pay for the facilities, uniforms, insurance, tournament fees and travel expenses.
“It is an expensive sport, but we’re probably one of the least expensive travel organizations around the country because it is pro bono,” said Rolling.
Participants also get identical practice uniforms which they are required to wear.
“Kids are coming from different walks of life financially,” noted Rolling. “Sometimes they get teased so we try to eliminate that from the beginning.”
The program runs pretty much year-round except for the older kids during the high school baseball season. In previous years, the California Interscholastic Federation prohibited studentathletes from playing club and high school sports at the same time. But this year, due to the coronavirus shutting down high school sports until at least January, CIF has lifted that provision.
If that new rule remains in place after January, clubs such as the Admirals can continue to function during the high school baseball season, which in 2021 is scheduled to run from March 8 to June 3.
The Admirals might do so because many of their older ballplayers need to be seen by the college scouts if they want a shot at playing at that level.
“We follow the NCAA calendar in terms of recruiting,” explained Rolling. “The club is geared around getting kids to the next level. Let’s say in January Division I and Power Five schools are allowed to go out and watch kids play. If there are tournaments where colleges are able to go out and recruit players, then we have to be at those events.”
Rolling is most concerned about the strain this may place on the studentathletes
“When tournaments start on Thursday and you have a high school game on Thursday or Friday, who is going to take preference, especially if a tournament will have 170 colleges at an event that a 2021 grad might be attending?’ asked Rolling. “Everybody feels that their team is the most important, so they want their athletes to make them the priority. It’s going to get very difficult for a lot of kids and a lot of programs, and I don’t know if we’re thinking this all the way out.”
When shelter-in-place hit Solano County in midMarch, the Admirals were in the midst of the regular season for the younger players, with practices three days a week and tournaments on weekends.
Rolling decided to shut down the program, although other baseball clubs continued to meet.
“We immediately took things into our own hands in terms of protecting our families, protecting our kids, ” said Rolling. “Unfortunately I wasn’t the favorite guy for the first few weeks because everyone (else) was going… Tournaments were being offered but it was just a scary moment. So I felt it was best for our organization to go dormant and wait for the next steps.”
As the county began to slowly open back up in terms of COVID restrictions, Rolling followed suit, putting together a detailed return policy that he ran by HIPPA experts, the schools and the CDC. The policy included social tracing, temperature checks, masks and disinfecting of hands and equipment.
The Admirals started conditioning with social distancing and without shared equipment. About a month ago, the club transitioned to shared equipment but still kept players six feet apart. The team bought dozens and dozens of new baseballs and employed a full disinfecting process.
But two weeks ago VCS, whose facilities the Admirals use, asked the team to go back to not sharing equipment, and Rolling complied.
“We want to follow the best protocol, make sure families and kids are safe,” he said. “It’s important to play sports, but we have to take it seriously. It’s just where we are in history and where we are in life.”
Other clubs in the county continued to hold practices with shared equipment and the Admirals lost some players to those teams.
On the positive side, the Admirals’ 16U and 18U elite teams have been able to travel to states with less stringent COVID restrictions and play tournaments in front of college scouts.
“We traveled to Utah and Oregon,” said Rolling. “We drove our vans and kept our team very close, basically quarantined within the pods of the team — no public restaurants, ate inhouse, reserved conference rooms for meals. We made sure we were safe and consistent, and we were successful.”
But the uncertainties around COVID and sports remain.
“It’s had a huge impact on youth sports and the way we do things,” said Rolling. “But we’ve been pretty resilient and handled it the best way we could… This is going to be a very challenging year as it already has been. Everything is so hypothetical and up in the air.”