Growing up in Garson, Jean-Gilles Larcoque shared the same passion for sport as most other youngsters his age – only different. While a good chunk of athletic Canadian kids long to lace up the skates, evoking images of the next Wayne Gretzky, Larocque shared the dreams of most all-American boys.

While others longed for the first October snowfall, the true sign of hockey in the air, Larocque welcomed the first sunny spring day with the enthusiasm known to the boys of summer – baseball players of all ages and sizes, anxiously awaiting the opportunity to head to the nearest dry diamond and field their first string of ground balls.

There was a time, in Sudbury, when this feeling may well have been shared by hundreds. In the early to mid nineties, baseball was not at its peak – nor was it languishing with ever-decreasing enrollment.

“Baseball was OK at that time – there were a lot of traveling teams, the Valley had a decent team, Sudbury had a team, Garson had a team, Elliot Lake...that’s when the Northern Elite League (NEL) started”, explained Larocque. It's been almost three full years since the NEL last hosted a game - but from 1992 through to the summer of 2006, the Northern Ontario loop was home to many of the top-aged junior players north of Barrie.

Many sporting interest are borne from family familiarity with a given pastime, a love of an athletic pursuit that is simply passed along from one generation to the next. Not so, for Larocque, who remains puzzled in trying to understand the genesis of his fascination with baseball.

"I honestly don't have a clue where my love of baseball came from. I guess it was just one of those things were in high-school, I played a several sports, and then during the summer, you wanted to do stuff" he says, noting that he did not begin his baseball career until the age of nine.

Nearing the end of his high-school days at Ecole Secondaire l'Héritage, Larocque searched more fervently for baseball options, playing in the Intercounty Baseball League with the Stratford Hillers and Brantford Red Sox in back to back summers.

A wooden-bat league at the time, the IBL provided Larocque with a host of contacts to pursue his dream of playing college ball in the United States, albeit with no lack of pro-active research on the part of the current educator at Bishop A. Carter Catholic Secondary School in Hanmer.

"I did a lot of work on my own, making contacts, calling coaches" acknowledged Larocque of the process that would eventually find the local catcher plying his trade in Texas, California, Virginia and West Virginia. Closing his American sojourn with a coaching stint in Stanton (Virginia) in the Shenondoah Valley League, Larocque returned home to pursue a career in teaching.

Still, his love of baseball never strayed. In 2000, Larocque staged the Northern Ontario Baseball Camp, an experience that provided many valuable lessons. "I got my feet wet, went through a huge learning curve, charged with my heart and not with my head and fell flat on my face", he laughs. But the adventure left him more determined than ever that he wanted to do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Since then, Larocque has spent time playing both slo-pitch and fastball as well as doing some coaching, but he admits that the birth of his twins this past winter has clearly made him more grounded. "I'm already thinking of calling this my last year of playing and try and get more involved in coaching."

With an expansive set of U.S. based baseball contacts already in place, Larocque is determined to do what he can to help move baseball in Northern Ontario forward. On June 6th and 7th, the Terry Fox Sports Complex will be the site for The Baseball Academy's first Northern Ontario camp, an opportunity for local talent to determine if they have what it takes to follow in Larocque's footsteps.

"This is not a teaching camp - it's an evaluation camp", empasizes Larocque. "I want to see where we stand in Northern Ontario as far as baseball." The weekend schedule includes fundamental hit, run and throw exercises while Sunday's session will allow the young athletes exposure to the Nike SPARQ rating system.

An acronym for Speed, Power, Agility, Reaction and Quickness, SPARQ has become an increasingly popular quantitative program that allows for a basic comparison of athletes from across North America. For Canadian youngsters who have clearly not been exposed to the same experience as an equivalent U.S. based athlete, the testing provides tangible proof that the core athletic components needed to mold a collegiate level competitor may well lie within.

"Coaches in the U.S. are using this rating system more and more", notes Larocque. "I'm having a certified SPARQ trainer coming up on the Sunday." The afternoon segment will be devoted to providing as much information as possible about the lay of the land for post-secondary institutions in the United States, covering off NCAA Division I and Division III schools, NIA and junior colleges and the basics of writing the SAT's.

The Baseball Academy camp is open to high-school students from grades 9 through 12, with limited enrollment capped at just twenty participants. The cost for the entire weekend is $ 140/player, with registration set for Friday (May 8th) and Saturday (May 9th) at Skater's Edge Source for Sports.

Registration and information will be available Friday from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. and Saturday from noon until 5:00 p.m. at the Lasalle Boulevard store location.