Bishop Hendricken is hosting its fifth-annual Green and Gold baseball camp at the school this week, teaching youngsters the basics of the game while also focusing on some of the finer points as well.

This year’s camp is the largest to date, hosting 90 kids from across three states, including Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Connecticut. This one-week camp features basic skills training on Monday and Wednesday, while also covering position-specific workouts on Tuesday and Thursday. Friday will include the camp’s championship games as well as skill competition.

“This is our fifth year and its continuing to grow in numbers and popularity. We now have kids coming from Connecticut, Massachusetts and all of Rhode Island which is great to see. We decided to keep it to 90 kids to make sure that these kids all get the best instruction possible. It’s first come, first serve, and the spots fill up … we had parents signing their kids up as early as February,” said Hendricken Assistant Athletic Director and assistant baseball coach Chris Sheehan.

Sheehan believes what separates this camp from others is the high level of coaching that the campers receive each day. Camp instructors include former Hendricken standouts, current Hendricken coaches, as well as many local players that have gone on to play collegiately and professionally.

“It’s all about the level of instruction that they’re receiving. We set a high priority on getting quality instructors and when you look at the instructors that we have, their resumes are impressive and they’re highly qualified. I think you’d be hard pressed to find another camp around here that offers the quality of instruction that we do,” said Sheehan, who also mentioned the camp’s premier guest speakers. “We also have had some high-level speakers come in. We’ve had Raphael Cerrato from URI, Steve Owens who was at Bryant and now Rutgers, we have a coach from Boston College coming, we’ve had professional scouts from the Yankees and Mets. We’ve had a great variety of visitors.”

The ultimate goal of the camp is to not only teach the kids the basics of the sport, but to also provide them with the tools to excel on the diamond for the rest of their careers.

“We’re trying to teach them the game after Little League,” said Sheehan. “We are working on leading, stealing bases, fine tuning some things. We have some really good talent coming through here, so our mindset is, if we can teach them these things at a young age, they’ll be able to carry that with them to high school, college and maybe even professionally.”