SCRANTON, Pa. — At RailRiders University, school is still in session. You just click for your clinic.
"I love to coach," former MLB player and Hazleton Area Baseball Coach Russ Canzler said. "I love to teach all the things that I was lucky enough to learn in my career. Unfortunately, we're not able to keep those things rolling in person. So the next-best thing would be keep sharing what we know and what we can teach to everybody through social media."
Russ Canzler helped start RailRider-U five years ago, and he's had some help moving it online.
"It's something I can do," North Pocono Baseball Coach Brian Jardine added. "It's not much. I'm not someone on the front lines like doctors and nurses, but this is something I can do to help."
"There's nothing in a coaching manual that says how to coach during a pandemic," Paul McGloin added, Owner of Electric City Baseball and Softball Academy. "So it's obviously uncharted waters, but it's a situation where you're really going to find out who works harder now. The better athletes and better baseball players I've been around are self-driven."
No better test than right now.
"It gives you an opportunity to do the work yourselves and do something other than sit in front of Netflix or play video games because it's going to come back," Canzler said.
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"This is going to end," Jardine added. "As much as it seems frustrating some days when you're waking up and it's Groundhog Day, when we come out the other side, you want to be ready to go and little things like this might not seem like a lot, but it is."
"Stay motivated," Canzler said. "I use a slogan 'Prepare Your Fields.' We don't know when it's going to rain. We don't know when the rains going to come. We're in an athletic drought right now. Prepare your fields like it's going to rain and it'll all work out for you."
Canzler said he had always planned on starting these online tutorials. This "athletic drought" as he calls it, just gave him the incentive to do it and he's hoping to expand on the idea by having current RailRiders post some drills.
"Who better to learn from than the guys who are currently playing professional baseball?" Canzler asked rhetorically.