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Scout Day Spotlight: Ohio Surge

WESTERVILLE - “The goal of the Ohio Surge is to provide an environment to enhance and encourage the development of skills and desires of our players in respect to the game of baseball.”

Brian Laffey, who took over running the organization from Joe Griffith in December of 2017, feels the mission is being accomplished.

“If you want to play in college, we’ll do whatever we can to make it happen,” noted Laffey, who had three boys playing with Ohio Surge when he took charge. One is still playing in the program.

The list of players moving on is at 35 since 2016,

“Obviously if we’re able to put that many to college we’re doing something right from a fundamental standpoint,” said Laffey, who coaches the 17U Surge. “We pride ourselves in not being a big flashy program. We try to keep fees within limits, we don’t want baseball to be a burden on anyone. We keep the fees low, but still provide players a chance to play a competitive schedule.”

The program has grown immensely since Griffith began it as a spinoff from the Lancaster Surge.

“Key contributors to the start up were John Fairand of Dublin, Randy Rose of Olentangy, Wade Cline of Marysville and Doug Harness of Huber Heights,” Laffey reflected. “It started as one team of mostly 2016 grads and has expanded to nine teams ages 13U to 18U.

“I don’t want it to water down where the quality of the team does down, but as we continue to grow, if the desire is there and we have quality players and coaches, why not expand? Ultimately, our goal is to have two teams at each age group from 10U to 17 or 18U. One would be a prospect team and one an elite team.”

The recruitment of players has expanded since the beginning.

“Players now come from statewide,” Laffey said. “While my team is mostly from central Ohio, we have 14 kids from 13 different different high schools. We pride ourselves in not being that neighborhood guy. We try not to have more than one or two from a given school.”

Alumni of the Surge have moved on to schools like Ohio State, Oakland and Eastern Michigan as well as Mt. Vernon, Siena Heights and Ashland since 2016. Four 2019 players have already made a college decision, while others are hoping to get the right exposure to move on as well.

Hope is that the PBR Scout Day on Feb. 17 will kick-start things for 2019.

“This will be our first one,” Laffey said of participating in a Scout Day event. “We definitely see the value of it. We have talented kids in the organization and we want them to be seen from an exposure standpoint.

“The (PBR) rankings get a lot of publicity. If your name is not in the rankings you’re not getting the publicity of what others do that get in the rankings. We thought this would be a good way to do it. It’s a good opportunity for our guys to get individual exposure.”

Practices to date have involved getting ready for the coming PBR event.

“My 17U guys know what to be prepared for, they’re doing college camps,” Laffey noted. “We’re doing this for 15U and up. Our coaches know what they need to do to help in preparing for it.”

More exposure comes in the summer.

“With our 13U to 18U teams there is a huge variation with their schedules,” Laffey said. “With our younger teams there’s a more local schedule, but that changes as they get older. Our 16U played in Fort Myers last year. We try to hit all the big tournaments like at Grand Park with all the older teams.”