Narrows Baseball Club teaches skills, offers exposure for players – The News Tribune

If there’s one thing that Narrows Baseball Club does well, it’s getting players noticed.

The select travel-program, which primarily draws from the Gig Harbor area, but also as far as Silverdale and Olympia, puts its players on the radars of college coaches and scouts.

“Our program is well enough known now, that we get a lot of colleges calling and coming out,” said Jon Fuller, coach of the 18U Narrows team. “They’re always contacting us.”

Recent examples include UCLA signee Mike Toglia, who was drafted recently the Colorado Rockies, Washington State University signee Jon Burghardt and Washington State commit Avery Jones, a pitcher who will be a senior at Gig Harbor High School next year.

“Being on the club has helped me a lot,” Jones said. “(Fuller) has taught me a lot about the game, and seeing guys like (Toglia) and (Burghardt) go through the program, it really helps me a lot seeing how to play the game the right way.”

Fuller started the club around 10 or 11 years ago with Rich Benedict, who currently coaches the 13U Narrows team. Fuller, who graduated from Peninsula High School in 1987, played baseball at Bellevue College for a year before kicking around the minor leagues for a while, spending seven seasons in the Cincinnati Reds organization and five seasons playing independent ball.

“Baseball has been a big part of my life,” Fuller said.

Playing as a catcher, Fuller had to have multiple shoulder surgeries, which may have hurt his chances of making it to the big leagues.

“That didn’t help,” he said. “But I loved it. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. You build a lot of friendships and connections along the way.”

Those connections in the baseball world have proved beneficial in the club coaching world. When Fuller was approached with coaching a 14U team, he still harbored some ambitions of coaching at the professional level, or even scouting, but he figured he’d give it a try.

“I liked it,” Fuller said. “As we built it up, I liked it even more. The point we’re at now, it’s something I’ve really grown into liking, just because I like to see kids start from a certain level and develop into college prospects. I just found what I like to do and I just stuck with it.”

That development starts at age 13, with Benedict.

“(Benedict) has been a huge part of our success of developing kids at a younger age,” Fuller said. “He’s such a great teacher. I wish every 13-year-old kid could play for Rich Benedict. He’s just a fantastic coach to transition from little league into travel ball. He’s just the best at it. He’s the one who really makes our program go and gets these kids going in the right direction. By the time we get them at the older levels, you can tell which kids have played for Rich.”

The kids that make the cut for the 13U team generally tend to stick around, which is somewhat rare for club baseball.

“We take a lot of pride in bringing our kids from 13U to 18U,” Fuller said. “We do that better than most programs. We do add some kids along the way, but for the most part, the nucleus of our team stays 13 through 18.”

The Narrows Baseball Club currently has five teams—13U, 14U, 15U, 16U and 18U. The 18U team plays in the somewhat recently formed Seattle Premier League. The league was formed 2010 as a response to concerns about the level of competition in the state.

“18U was getting kind of watered down,” Fuller said. “We were playing against teams that probably shouldn’t even be on the field with you. They formed this league so you have matchups of good teams playing good teams.”

Fuller said most of the kids he coaches at the 18U level go on to play some kind of college ball, at various levels. While the players benefit from Fuller’s connections, they also benefit from his knowledge of the game.

“(Fuller) has experience playing the game,” Jones said. “He really knows everything there is to know about baseball.”

The 18U team is heading to Pullman for the Palouse Summer Series this weekend before returning home to face the Thurston County Saints at Cheney Stadium at 6 p.m. Tuesday (June 28).