Volunteers receive help; Reibel, Davis on All-America teams

So you're thinking about becoming a volunteer coach in youth baseball.

Good for you.

Now it's time to pause and ask yourself if you're really ready to take on this enormous challenge of guiding our young people.

Don't you wish you could take a training course first that fits your schedule?

Caliendo Sports International, a Schaumburg-based company, and Coaches Video Library have joined forces in developing an online training course for volunteer baseball coaches.

"Helping volunteer coaches to help develop our grass roots in the game has been a passion of mine for over 20 years," said Peter Caliendo, a professional skill development coach.

"Volunteer coaches have great intentions but certainly have a difficult task in teaching a very difficult skilled-specific sport to our young kids. We need to supply the right resources to help them make practice more fun and develop basic skills."

The course has 250 video drills with voice overlay, skill overview templates for all aspects of baseball, pre-practice module to pre-practice your team online and many more features to help youth coaches.

Contact Caliendo Sports International at (847) 781-8039 or caliendosportsinternational@comcast.net

Basketball

Senior point guard Jonny Reibel (Hoffman Estates) of Rollins College (Winter Park, Fla.) was named to the Daktronics NCAA Division II All-America First Team and also the NABC/State Farm Division II All-America First Team.

That completes a sweep for the 6-foot-2 Reibel that also included all-conference, all-region and all-district honors. He has been selected to play in the NABC/NCAA Division II All-Star Game.

Another player from Illinois also made both All-America first teams -- 6-8 John Smith (Winona State) of Johnsburg High School.

Swimming

Skylar Davis (Palatine) of Gustavus Adolphus College (St. Peter, Minn.) earned All-America honors by taking seventh place (15:43.69) in the 1,650-yard freestyle at the NCAA Division III Championships.

Gymnastics

Freshman Allison Buckley (Conant) of the University of Illinois was named All-Big Ten First Team and also the Big Ten Freshman of the Year. In last weekend's Big Ten Championships, she finished second on beam, fourth on vault and in the all-around and seventh in floor exercise.

Baseball

Pitcher Trace Ruffie (Hersey) of Carthage College was named player of the week in the College Conference of Illinois and Wisconsin. He went 2-0 during the Red Men's 10-0 trip to the RussMat Tampa Bay Invitational, giving up no earned runs in 15 innings. He struck out 16 and walked only 1.

• Senior Justin Rezzuto (Hersey) of North Central College worked 6.2 innings against Clarkson College of New York in Orlando, Fla., allowing 2 earned runs while striking out 6, and he picked up his first win of the season.

• Two area products have 6 of Duke's wins in a 21-7 start. Freshman Grant Monroe (Schaumburg) is 4-1 for 26 innings and junior Andrew Wolcott (Warren) is 2-1 for 28.1. The 6-5, 240-pound Wolcott worked 6 strong innings as Duke upset No. 2 North Carolina 13-4.

• Scott Perkinson (Elk Grove) of Elmhurst College batted .448 for seven games in Arizona. He had 13 hits, 1 triple, 1 double and 10 runs scored.

• Mark Kelly (Hoffman Estates) was hitting .314 after 23 games at Southern Illinois University. He had the team lead in hits (27) and RBI (21).

• Bryan Chalekian (Wheeling) of Wisconsin-Stout picked up his first collegiate pitching win by scattering 6 hits over 5.1 innings against Wisconsin-Platteville. He struck out 5 in his first start after going his first 13 college innings without allowing an earned run.

In an earlier game, pitcher Will Osmanski (Elk Grove) of Platteville worked 5 innings against Stout for his first win.

• Casey Garms (Hersey) has accepted a coaching position for this summer with the New Market (Va.) Rebels of the Virginia College Baseball League. The four-year starter at Wisconsin-Parkside is in his first season as a graduate assistant coach with Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.

Softball

Molly Meyer (Elk Grove) is hitting .431 at the University of Dayton to rank second in the Atlantic 10 for 27 games. She is first in hits (44), triples (3) and total bases (56) and fourth in runs (24).

Ashley Sloan, another Elk Grove product, was hitting .400 for 20 games at Yale. She leads the team in hits (30) and runs (18).

• At the St. Louis Invitational last weekend, Washington University's Laura D'Andrea (Prospect) went 5-for-9 with 3 doubles, while teammate Claire Voris (Barrington) improved her record to 11-1, throwing a 4-hit shutout with 8 strikeouts.

Last week Laura and Claire were both named first-team University Athletic Association All-Conference, and Claire was named rookie of the year, after the Bears went 7-1 to win their 5th straight conference tournament title.

• Kat Krause (Hersey) of Loyola hit .500 for four games with 3 runs, 2 homers, 4 RBI and a stolen base. She owns the school record for career home runs with 31 and is only 3 RBI short of another Loyola career mark.

• Lauren Cruz (Maine West) of the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater was hitting .395 after 12 games. She had 15 hits, including 2 homers and 10 RBI.

• Nicole Pauly (Palatine) leads Northwestern with 17 RBI in 24 games. She has 3 home runs.

• Freshman Kiley Lythberg (Prospect) of Central College in Iowa has 5 pitching wins, and she had a streak of 12 scoreless innings.

Track and field

Mike Richardson (Buffalo Grove) of Illinois State finished first in the 3,000-meter steeplechase (9:22.22) at the Southern Illinois Spring Classic in Carbondale.

BG Shootout

The BG Shootout 3-Person Mechanics Camp for basketball officials will be held June 19-21 at Buffalo Grove High School.

Directed by Ed Curtin with Fred Allman, John Katzler, Jim Bernardi and Randy Steen serving as clinicians, the camp opens with a 3-hour classroom on Thursday, June 19 from 6-9 p.m.

Current 3-person mechanics and rules changes will be discussed.

There will be games on Friday and Saturday, June 20-21, and each official will work six over two days with afternoon and evening sessions. All games are at a boys varsity level.

The clinic will satisfy the IHSA certification requirement. Officials will receive a written observation report.

The fee is $70.

For information, contact Curtin at (847) 991-3144 or fax to (847) 934-5861.

Rugby

Britton Meihls (Hoffman Estates) of Purdue University played the wing and lock positions on the Boilermaker women's team that went 3-1 and finished runner-up in the Nash Bash Invitational in Nashville, Tenn., losing to Indiana in the title game.

Cheerleading

Marcie McGowan (Schaumburg) was on the cheerleading squad for men's basketball at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside. This was the first year for the squad, and they performed at all home basketball games.