The Athens Baseball Camp began Monday at the High School baseball field, the first leg of a three-day camp based on instruction in the fundamentals of hitting, fielding and pitching.

There were 186 campers between the ages of 5-12 signed up for the three-day event, which is “double the max” from what Athens head baseball coach Chuck Smith has seen previously going into his seventh year.

The annual camp was not held last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

“It’s absolutely awesome to be back. To see all the kids and everything out here, it just brings a smile to my face,” Smith said. “I think everybody is excited to get out and do stuff again.”

Smith couldn’t be more thrilled with the turnout, and he’s confident it’s only a sign of things to come.

“The amount of people that’s moving into this area, it just excites me, because we have this many kids excited about baseball,” he said. “We got kids not just from Athens — we have kids from Harvest, Huntsville, Madison, two or three from Morgan County, a few from Lawrence County and we even had a couple kids come from Tennessee come down.”

The annual camp runs from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. Monday through Wednesday every year.

“Normally we do it the same time as softball, but they decided to do it at a different time,” Smith said. “Thank goodness, because we would have had 186 kids spread out all over.”

It has been a busy summer for Smith, and admittedly he’s looking forward to taking a break when this is all over, but he’s excited to be a part of this and even more excited that his players are up for it, too.

“I’m excited that the guys are excited,” Smith said. “I was telling them all last week when were doing team camp stuff how many kids we had signed up, and their jaws just dropped.”

One of those players, Tucker Stockman, a rising senior on the Athens baseball team, who is already committed to play baseball at Southern Mississippi University, loves being a part of the camp to make a difference.

“It’s awesome to be able to help out the community a little bit and see some of the kids that hopefully will playing in the program someday,” Stockman said.