Craig Everett, who has been the Head Coach of Concordia for 13 years, and involved with college baseball for 20+ years, recently had some downtime during the baseball season for the first time in decades. He approached Pete Kritikos, owner of Team BEAST, with an idea to create a post-graduate program for players that either wanted to take a gap year after high school or that are sitting out a year in college due to the roster overload that was caused by COVID.
“Ironically, we had just sent in a proposal to a place in Florida to do the same, so we said it just makes sense to do it here,” said Kritikos. “We’ll start here and if things progress in the future, we’ll see. But with so many kids re-classing and not finding homes, it makes sense to do,” he added.
They have decided to begin BEAST Academy, a post-graduate program, and it will open up shortly after Labor Day. The focus will be on playing baseball and training, while being able to live at home and not losing college eligibility. It will mirror the duration of a college year, taking two weeks off for Christmas break, resuming right after the New Year and concluding on roughly May 15.
The concept of taking a post-graduate gap year has exploded in the past year as there has been an influx of players at the collegiate level and some rosters soaring well beyond what is necessary to play a season.
“When you look at the rosters at some of these colleges, would you really want to be the 50th player?” said Everett. What more and more parents have opted to do, is have their sons take a “gap year” where they focus on improving their game without losing a year of eligibility. It’s like a red-shirt year without being on campus.
Many high school players have opted to re-classify or push their graduation back a year in order to help their recruiting situation. Some do it just if they have a late birthday and don’t want to be the youngest in their grade – it’s something that is very common in the south where players that are born in September or later often start school one year later. This concept has become more common in the post-pandemic era as players are finding it harder and harder to find a home – even some top players.
“Parents want their kid to mature before they get on campus. Also, last year with coaches not being able to recruit, kids have played their whole lives, worked hard for this, and suddenly there was very few coaches. Then maybe those schools that do come don’t fit you academically. We have three or four high-academic kids that re-classed. The schools they were looking at didn’t have a fit for them. We also had the valedictorian at Bay Shore get told to wait a year,” said Kritikos, so it can happen to anyone this year.
The program is strictly for post-graduated at this time. But Kritikos stressed that it is going to “feel like playing in a college program – without the college.” Players will be given full gear, they’ll host a scout day, they’ll have access to a college recruiting service, social media coverage and they’ll even play a 60-game schedule against local JuCos, JV programs for 4-year schools and take two trips down south. Kritikos noted they have a week long trip to Florida and another to Myrtle Beach set to play games.
Their team will be consisted of 20-25 players, coached by Craig Everett and two assistants. They will have full reigns to the academy to hit, throw and workout during the day, which will be included in the tuition.
“It’s basically everything that a parent could want baseball-related, along with guidance academically,” said Everett.
That academic component is important since these players still will likely be headed off to a college the following fall. For the college athletes that do attend this, they can simply remain part-time students so it doesn’t affect their eligibility either.
Craig stated he believes a bulk of the roster will consist of college players that are looking for their second-chance. “Maybe they had a bad semester and are ineligible,” he said and this would be a perfect situation for them to get back on track and look for their next opportunity. He also said that from his experience the “biggest maturity jump in a kid comes between freshman and sophomore year of college.” He went onto say “if we can help that kid out, not just athletically but also on how to act off-the-field that can be very beneficial.”
“I think the thing a lot of people don’t realize with Craig is that not only does he have the college coaching experience and the summer college coaching, but he did everything at Concordia. He also has a double masters in education, so he can help guys get eligible and stay eligible. He’s also a family-oriented guy, and that represents everything we want to exude,” he said.
They will announce the rest of the coaching staff following the high school season. Pete stated that “the amount of high-profile baseball people that have already reached out about this is kind of crazy. It goes to show that everyone feels that this is a need. I don’t know how far this could go. But down south, some kids do online-schooling and play while at an academy. The academies have their own conference.”
In regards to the post-pandemic future he said, “Now I hope things go back to normal, but you have to adapt and we are trying to help these kids,” he added.
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