Phil Bova Baseball Camp comes to Westlake

The Phil Bova Baseball Camp made its Westlake debut June 21-25, after years of instructing students in Berea. The camp welcomed 185 boys, aged 7-14, from across the region and instructed them on the fundamentals of the sport.

Students were divided into groups of 30 and each group was assigned four coaches. The first half of each day was spent rotating between five separate skills training stations: hitting, ball-flipping, run-downs, cut-offs, and bunting. Training was put into practice during the afternoon games. At the end of the day, students were given individualized instruction specific to their preferred position on the field.

Phil Bova, a Westlake resident and member of the Greater Cleveland Sports Hall of Fame, says the goal of the camp is to “teach our youth the right way to play the game, and hopefully get them to the next level.”

The camp had been operating in Berea for 36 years, but this year moved to its new location after Bova met with Westlake city officials. “We looked at the pros and we looked at the cons, and there were certainly more pros than cons,” he said.

Bova was sold on the facilities at the Recreation Center Park, as well as the convenient location. “There’s a lot of room, we have a great group of kids here, and we have a nice surrounding group of community people,” Bova said.