Elite 100 to showcase baseball talent
Sometimes a high school baseball player just needs a chance. A little something extra to get noticed and further their playing career.
So longtime coaches Dan Donato and Rick Forestiere joined forces to create the Elite 100, a program designed to help local high school baseball players get recognized. The inaugural event is scheduled to run at Brandeis on June 27-28 from 4-8 p.m.
“We’ve always wanted to find a way to take care of the local kids and we don’t have anything like this around here,” said Donato, the head baseball coach at Dexter Southfield. “The goal is to provide a showcase where we have a mix of kids from the public, private and Catholic schools. I’ve reached out to a lot of local high school coaches and they are fully on board with this.”
To take on an endeavor of this magnitude, it helps to have people with a little cachet; Donato and Forestiere fit the bill. Donato was a multi-sport athlete at Catholic Memorial who played hockey and baseball at Boston University. He went on to a minor league career in both the New York Yankees and Tampa Bay (Devil) Rays organizations, getting as high as Triple-a.
Forestiere played baseball at Brandeis, graduating in 1991. He spent 26 years in the Independent School League, coaching at both BB&N and Thayer Academy before stepping down in 2022.
It’s one thing to have a showcase, but doing it the right way can be troublesome. The answer to their dilemma was right under their noses. Donato sent his son Danny to John Papas’
Elite Football Clinic, while Forestiere was the athletic director at BB&N where Papas was the head football coach from 2003-2013.
“There is no better guy at running a clinic than John,” Donato said. “He is the master at this, my son went to his NE Elite Clinic and loved it.”
When they approached Papas with the possibility of converting the Elite Football Clinic model to baseball, he was only too happy to provide his wisdom, experience and guidance.
“First of all, I’ve known both of them for a long time and I have the utmost respect for them,” Papas said. “They know baseball and have great connections throughout the sport. In order for something like this to be successful, you need panache. Danny and Rick both have that. They’ve coached multiple MLB draft picks and hundreds of college players. They’re respected by both the college and high school coaches. For that reason alone, I think it’s something that can work in this area without a doubt in my mind.”
Under the format, every kid is guaranteed a minimum of three at-bats a game and every pitcher will face a minimum of six batters. Donato thinks this is more than sufficient for a player to showcase his skills in front of a bevy of coaches from the likes of Harvard, Dartmouth, Boston College, Northeastern, Bryant as well as Saint Anselm and the NESCAC.
“I’ve coached for 25 years and I just want to do anything possible to help kids get to the next level whatever it happens to be for them.” Donato said. “The goal is to provide something for a local kid to get noticed and I think this is it.”