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Enyelbert Soto pushes Kirsten Sigurdsson’s elbow up to the right. Then he moves her left arm back. She flicks the baseball at the target and Soto claps his hands.
“Good. Good. Next,” he says and he claps and blows his whistle.
For the last eight weeks, Soto has been at Jubilee Field in Corner Brook, N.L., working with players and coaches in the baseball association. His practices, held almost every night of the week, are long.
“I love it. It just makes us all better,” said 13-year-old Sigurdsson.
“Before he first came, I was throwing a lot of balls up high, and he’s taught me to bring it down and control it and throw faster and harder.”
Soto’s practices are all about precision and repetition. He thrives for perfection from everyone he coaches.
“I know to have success you need to do a lot of reps. And I just allow them to get a lot of reps, but fun,” Soto said in an interview.
“So that is why I am getting a lot of success with them. I am pushing them a lot but in a fun way.”
Featured VideoBaseball is changing in Corner Brook thanks to Enyelbert Soto, who spent 20 years pitching professionally all over the globe.
Soto didn’t start as a coach. His dream of playing professional baseball started at home in Venezuela when he was 12.
“I worked for five years, really hard every day,” said Soto, who was eventually drafted by the Houston Astros. His career took him to diamonds in several countries, including Mexico, Italy and Japan.
Travelled the world
After a 20-year career, travelling the world as a professional pitcher, Soto decided to stop playing and start training the next generation. He started his own baseball academies in Miami and Venezuela.
Last year he saw an ad for a head coaching position in Corner Brook, having always wanted to live with his family in Canada, he applied.
The association worked hard to get him and his wife to Corner Brook.
“Everybody’s been super-excited about him. He’s doing such a great job,” said association president Jason Mosher.
“Everybody’s happy with the skills he’s teaching and his overall engagement with the players. There’s not a player he doesn’t meet that he doesn’t take to and try to find something he can work on with them.”
That’s especially true for 14-year-old Aiden Sansome, Soto’s assistant coach.
Sansome says Soto has taught him to throw the ball farther, not harder.
“I’ve never seen a coach like it. He’s super-understanding and he has so much different techniques and he’s introduced me to so much new stuff,” he said.
Soto will continue with the creative practices all this week, taking advantage of the warm fall weather.
He is under a three-year contract with the association but hopes to stay in Corner Brook long term.
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