Local Press

My mom joined the board of directors at the soup kitchen in Torrington and came up with a great idea to raise money and food for the kitchen that serves a hot meal everyday of the year to those in need. Her idea was to have me run a baseball clinic and all the donations of food and money would go straight to the soup kitchen. The clinic was mainly geared towards younger players but was open to anyone who was interested. We were able to execute this clinic in March before I came to spring training. My mom worked hard getting the announcement out to schools, radios, newspapers, etc. and we had a great turnout. We estimated that we had about 50-60 people in attendance including about 35 kids. The clinic was 90 minutes long where I spoke on some baseball fundamentals and also had the kids out on the gym floor working on defensive fundamentals. It was pretty cool because even in that short time I could see some of the kids getting better. I asked the kids questions about different things I had talked about, and they were able to remember everything that I had talked about. And more importantly we raised almost $400 and 7 full boxes of food. There was a nice article in the local Register Citizen. http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2011/03/12/sports/doc4d7c1706e97b6329219476.txt.

I recently talked to Register Citizen reporter Peter Wallace, who I have known since my high school days, and actually talked to him more during my basketball career than baseball. We talked about my spring training experience and that I was able to dress for a couple spring training games. He put together a nice article that you can read here: http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2011/03/25/sports/doc4d8d5e77559bc327717859.txt.

And I have to give a shout out to Jordan Williams, another Torrington H.S. alum, who has been playing basketball for 2 years at the University of Maryland. Jordan just filled out paperwork to enter his name in the 2011 NBA draft, so congrats Jordan and the whole Williams family. This guy is a really hard worker and has improved so much in the last few years. I know the whole Williams family and they are always supporting me with my baseball career, which I appreciate so much; I'm excited for their family to go through this exciting time. There's not a better family that this could happen to; I've actually kept in contact with Jordan and his parents through facebook and emailing. Jordan was able to hook my buddy and myself up with tickets to the Terps games at UVA and Virginia Tech during this basketball season. I was able to take a video from our second row seats just before tip-off at Virginia Tech.

There is an article about Jordan putting his name into the NBA draft where I was quoted, as he was a freshman at THS when I was a senior.

http://www.registercitizen.com/articles/2011/03/30/sports/doc4d92b1421c32d452779977.txt