Training camps for sports can be a very profitable business that often treads a fine line between taking advantage of young athletes, and guiding them in the right direction.

The baseball program, who wanted to host a camp for catchers, decided to take the money from the camp and put it back in the CUSD community. Assistant coaches Damien Tippett and Ray Mota joined forces to start the first annual Catchers Crushing Cancer Clinic.

This clinic not only helps athletes from 12-18 years-old improve their catching skills, but all proceeds will be going to an Anderson Elementary second grader Isabelle Hartung, who has been fighting cancer and is scheduled for her final round of chemotherapy this month.

“We wanted to have a catcher’s camp because our catchers needed the work and we wanted to do something for our community,” Tippett said. “This just made sense.”

In just a couple of weeks, the clinic was able to raise $630 for seven year-old Isabelle, who, along with Trajen Curtis (another CUSD second grader who has defeated cancer), came out to learn a little about baseball during camp on Sept. 19.

“Because of their cancer, Isabelle had a kidney removed and Trajen lost part of his arm,” Tippett explained, “but you never would have known it if you saw them swinging the bat and running the bases.”

Many of the baseball coaches have personal stories with cancer. Mota has beaten cancer not once, but twice. He said that he cheated death twice after being diagnosed with Lymphoma.

“[Cancer] has given me a better appreciation for the game and a better appreciation for life,” he explained.

Mota said taking social responsibility and sports is a good mix since “it sets a level [for] a young player to say ‘you know what, there is something bigger than the game.’”

The camp has given a new connotation to a sports clinic. It gives the camp a bigger meaning than just making athletes better; it makes it a way for camp to reach out and help their community.