Rain Moves Ken Hubbs Little League Clinic to Redlands as Dodgers Coach Dino Ebel Mentors Kids

Ken Hubb’s Little League’s 4th annual Baseball Clinic was originally intended to be hosted at Veterans Park in Colton, but the heavy rains caused a location change to occur the day before, where Prime Baseball offered their training location in Redlands for the day on January 4.

Although the abrupt location change and the continuation of the rains, there was only a minimal impact on the amount of attendees at the Clinic. President of Ken Hubbs Memorial Little League, Alex Gago said We’re taking registration as they come in. Sometimes parents may say, You know what, let’s just stay home today because of the rain and things like that. But I think the amount of coaching staff that we have here and the alumni I don’t think it’s going to affect us.

Due to the space of the new location of the clinic, the kids had to be separated by age groups, ages 5-8 was from 9am-10am, ages 9-11 was from 10am-11am, and ages 12-16 was from 11am-12pm.

One of the parents from the 9-11 age group, Jenny Barreto said, “It’s nice you know just so he gets more exposure and more motivation and see how fun it can be, versus just, you know, practice and games and this is outside of our community, so I like to go around to other communities and meet more people.

Barreto’s son Ethan shared the same sentiment, saying, “Yeah I like it, it’s fun and baseball is really cool too.”

Gago said, “It’s really all about who you know, they’re great friends of Stan Sanchez, who’s a legendary coach he’s literally a legend. So right now, Stan is really a major player in putting this together. I help him as well. But as far as facilitating all these major names, that’s Stan Sanchez.”

Some of the major names Gago referred to were Former Catcher for the Phillies Jeff Groteworld and Third Baseman Coach for the Los Angeles Dodgers Dino Ebel. 

Ebel said, “I played baseball in this area, San Marino Valley College, so anytime that I could just share my experience, to tell stories on work habits and doing good in school and being a being a good person is always what I look forward to telling young kids at clinics like this, especially for Ken Hubbs who to me is a hero star of the area, and I am just fortunate they invited me to come back and be a part of it.”

Some major contributors to putting together the baseball clinic was the Ken Hubbs Little League, Colton’s Lions Club, local Inland Empire baseball student volunteers, and former Inland Empire College Baseball Coach Stan Sanchez.

Sanchez said, “So I’m from this area, Ken Hubbs was a former athlete, great athlete by the way, out of Colton. And I knew him when I was a young kid, and he was very influential. This is the fourth annual Ken Hubbs Youth Clinic. It’s for kids, and I invited a bunch of my former players that played for me that are now coaches in the Inland Empire, and they came to help us, and they brought their players with okay to help us instruct.”

Ken Hubbs Little League also received a donation of $1,500 from Joe Baca Jr. who also has a connection of playing baseball and contributing towards the Little League in previous years.

With the weather in the clear, Spring signups for the Ken Hubbs Little League have resumed on the field and parents are still able to register their kids likely until February.