Lou Green needs no introduction in southern West Virginia.
The owner of Peak Performance Baseball, the Logan graduate has a resume that speaks for itself – all-stater, state champion, two-time major league draftee, etc.
That’s why when he speaks, the people listen.
After playing and coaching across the country, Green moved back to Logan two years ago and started hosting youth baseball camps to help the community. It’s been a rousing success.
After hosting one during the week of baseball regionals, he opened another one for pitchers ages 7-10. There was so much interest he had to split the the event into two different camps.
“We had done some camps in the past,” Green said. “Typically I don’t market it statewide – we try to find some kids in the region. We had some parents that kind of threw this one out there so we got some kids coming from a little further away. We’ve got some kids coming from McDowell County, some from Webster Springs, some Boone County kids. We’ll reach a little further than we have, but it filled up quick. I planned on just taking 15 pitchers but I posted the flyer, went to swim with my little girls and came back and we had about 40 kids that were asking to get in.
“Honestly some of the kids I graduated high school with have been pressing us to teach some younger kids how to pitch. We’re in vacation season right now so there’s really no easy way to teach them outside of a camp so we decided to do the group camp. We decided to take the 40 and split it into two camps, so hopefully this gains traction and we can stay busy with the camp. I love to do them.”
A baseball junkie, Green recognized the absence of baseball instruction throughout southern West Virginia and aimed to remedy that. He’s learned a lot that helps him do so.
Drafted by the Atlanta Braves out of high school and the Anaheim Angels while at WVU, he spent four years as a minor league pitcher before two Tommy John surgeries ended his playing career.
Since Green initially left West Virginia, he’s learned more regarding the science of pitching from some of the industry’s leading experts. Now he has the opportunity to pass on what he’s learned.
“I worked with a guy named Bob Keyes at Bio-Kinetics 3D Research and Development in Salt Lake City,” Green said. “To me, Bob is the world’s best at teaching pitchers and teaching hitters the correct mechanics and biomechanics. He works with a million dollars worth of equipment a day so I was fortunate to get to learn those things. My experience as a pitcher was short-lived, and it wasn’t nothing that I didn’t learn because I had great coaches along my path, especially Jim Willis at Logan. He’s the best in the business. The information we have now is so much different than what was out there in the 90s and early 2000s.
“Slow motion cameras, the force plates under the mound measuring force and newtons, the 3D capabilities where they can take your body, turn it into a skeleton and see what every muscle and bone is doing in each part of your delivery. Science and technology have really improved. The ability to teach and analyze is so much different. I wish I would’ve been a pitcher right now and not 15 years ago.”
Much of what he learned won’t apply to the 7-10 year-old age group, but will for his next camp he plans to hold at the beginning of August for an older age group.
“The next camp we have will be for some kids that are a little older and that’s where you really start to apply a lot of the science,” Green said. “They’ll learn about pitching from the stretch, holding runners, throwing different pitches and that sort of stuff. We really teach the finer details of pitching in that camp.”
Green expects that camp to fill up quickly as well when he officially opens registration in the coming week. Of course a lot of that interest correlates with the baseball history and success at Logan. The Wildcats have won seven titles since 1984, with their latest coming last month.
The tradition plays a large part in Green hosting these camps.
“For sure,” Green said. “I think winning gets the whole community excited. I was fortunate enough to win as a player and help coach the guys this year when they won it again, so baseball means a lot down here. We had a summer camp earlier in the year and I originally wanted to cut it off at 60 kids but ended up taking 85 because I didn’t want to turn away any local kids. I know for a lot of kids this might be the only baseball instruction they get to experience. We usually run pitching, hitting, infield and catching camps for each age group once or twice a year.
“There really aren’t any college programs within an hour of here so the more success the basketball and baseball programs have, the more interest there is from young kids. People who played 20 years ago with me, suddenly they’re dads and I think that has a lot to do with it as well. I think it’s a success cycle. The parents know what it took to succeed so they instill that in their kids and they help drive these programs. That’s the fuel to good programs.”
For more information on future camps you can contact Lou Green on Facebook via Facebook messenger.
Contact Tyler Jackson at tylerjackson@lootpress.com, call him at 304-731-5542 and follow on Twitter @tjack94