Illinois Hawks Making a Mark in Youth Baseball

The Illinois Hawks, a travel baseball organization, is making its mark in the Plainfield, Joliet, Shorewood, and Minooka areas. Created two years ago by three local guys John Airola, Kelly Ash, and the face of the organization Ben Hewett. Hewett was a local star with the Joliet Slammers and is a current college assistant coach with St. Francis University. These three coaches decided to combine their respective teams to make a "super" team and then soon realized a dream, that there was a demand for more teams at all levels. Ben Hewett had a connection with the stadium where he once played and now coaches at Silver Cross Stadium and the three decided to have a tryout. over 250 players of all ages showed up to try out and in its first year the organization was formed with six teams. Going away from the tradition of youth sports the three partners decided to not have dads do the coaching of the high school level teams, instead they went where most don't to local college and pro players. This proved successful with not only the players being able to relate to their coaches, but gave the parents an insight of how college practices were run because the coaches would implement what they had done at the college level.

Part of the Illinois Hawks draw as well is the ability to place Juniors and Seniors in high school in a college recruiting setting. The Hawks have a staff in place that communicates on a daily basis with college coaches and pro scouts to help its players to achieve a baseball scholarship or possible draft into the MLB. In 2014 the hawks had three seniors of which all three were awarded baseball scholarships. In 2016 the Illinois Hawks have helped 8 seniors get awarded college scholarships along with one junior Austin Marozas committ to Mississippi State and two other Juniors with multiple offers from Division one schools. In total they will have a 90% rate when it comes to their players playing at the college baseball level.

In year two the Illinois Hawks now have twelve teams of which are coached by 5 current or former college players and two that are coached by a current college coach and former pro Ben Hewett and the other Ryne White a three time All American at Purdue and a 4th round draft pick. They have a training facilty in Shorewood that is owned by Kelly Ash. It is a 32,500 square foot building that has multiple sports but mainly focuses on baseball training and soccer.

As the Illinois Hawks continue to grow adding more players and coaches they will surely leave a mark on youth baseball overtime as the sky is the limit for these three dreamers.