Texas Rangers hold baseball camp at LCC

Lead Instructor Turtle Thomas. Photo: Submitted by Mr. Thomas.

The Texas Rangers, a major league baseball team in the American League West division, is holding a professional baseball skills elite hitting camp at Lenoir Community College.

The Elite Camp schedule includes 75 minutes of advanced instruction with both morning and afternoon sessions, two hours at hitting stations in the morning and the afternoon. There are eight stations for advanced hitting drills. Students will have extensive coaching with pitching machine batting practice.

“We love to get that middle school kid. We love to get that high school kid. So, any of that age range is good,” said Turtle Thomas. “We’d love to have them.”

Scheduled for Wednesday, November 11th, the camp will be from 9:00 am until 5:00 pm for those interested, ages 12-18, who wish to work on their skills. With a cost of $140, the elite hitting camp will include seven hours of instruction, drills, and batting practice.

The lead instructor, Turtle Thomas, is the current Texas Rangers roving catching instructor and the 2020 Wood Ducks catching instructor who was born and raised in High Point, NC. Another lead instructor is Steve Mintz who is the current pitching instructor with the Texas Rangers and the 2018-2020 Wood Ducks pitching coach.

“I've been with the Texas Rangers coaching catching for the last five years and I'm the roving catching coach in three levels of the Ranger organization for catchers,” said Thomas.

Participants who played baseball in middle school or high school or participated in a travel team are expected to have baseball apparel, glove, bat, cleats, turfs or tennis shoes, and a batting glove.  

“We'll probably try to do this on a yearly basis at some point in November,” said Thomas. “We're not trying to do one and done type of thing”