WASHINGTON — P.S. Jones head coach Wesley Ham got an early look at asome potential Demons baseball players this week at the first Future Stars Athletic Camp.

“We’re trying to make our program better and all the kids in Beaufort County better,” Ham said. “We wanted to give them the opportunity to come out and see this facility, while giving them a chance to improve their game.”

With temperatures in the mid-90s, Ham took advantage of the indoor amenities offered by the newly opened Athletic Edge Sports & Fitness Center, located at the corner of Fifth and Berry Street.

The four-day camp was opened to students entering grades three through six and was the third of four sessions being offered by Ham. On Monday, students began with fielding and hitting fundamentals, utilizing the turf to field softly hit groundballs.

Equipped with operating batting cages and one five-pitch machine, kids rotated between hitting off a tee and hitting fastballs from the pitching machine as Ham critiqued and adjusted their swings. The Demons’ head coach credited the brand new pitching machine with saving his arm from what would have been certain fatigue.

“The main thing is to make sure they have a good balance at the plate and have as little movement as possible with their head,” Ham said. “We make sure they finish and ‘squash the bug’ with their back foot. A lot of them at this age don’t finish their swings and are swinging half way. We concentrate on ‘squashing the bug’ and getting them to finish and make sure they keep their head on the ball. The chin is what we focus on, so that way they’ll keep their head on the ball.”

As the camp progressed and the students began to fine-tune their mechanics, the hitting and fielding exercises slowly became more advanced. Tracking fly balls turned into bucket drills and Mondays’ low-60s fastballs were arching curveballs by Thursday.

Helping Ham with the camp was P.S. Jones football coach Lane Raper, who helped kids tackle Athletic Edge’s indoor pitching mound.

“I played college baseball and we never got to do anything this nice,” Ham said. “The pitching machine is amazing and throws curveballs, knuckleballs, changeups, fastballs and sliders … five pitches. They’ve been really nice, giving us workers to feed the machines so we can concentrate on helping the kids.”

The final session for the 2014 Future Stars Athletic Camp will be from July 7-10, starting at 9 a.m. Ham says that after the four-day camp, all 13 students showed noticeable improvement.