Antioch Baseball hosts the Antioch Youth Little League for its AYLL Night. This event is meant to connect with the little leaguers while exemplifying the Sequoit baseball way. AYLL nights are hosted every Wednesday for seven weeks. AYLL nights help connect younger athletes with the ACHS baseball program and work with them by implementing drills the program uses to ensure they are prepared when their time to be a Sequoit comes.
Varsity Coach Fracek is entering his third year as the head varsity coach. AYLL Nights have been under the previous head coach, Chris Malec, for eight years. Fracek made the change to include the high school players working with the Little Leaguers as a helping hand. When Malec was running the show, he ran AYLL all by himself.
“I thought it would be valuable to incorporate our high school boys because all these little leaguers love our high school guys,” Fracek said. “Then it’s a cycle where the current high school players help out the little leaguers, then the upcoming high school players will help out the little leaguers when it’s their time.”
AYLL president of baseball, Jackie Bennecke, shared the history and impact of the AYLL program. AYLL has been running in Antioch for many years and has been led by Bennecke for eight years. Bennecke believes that AYLL nights help many children in various ways.
“It develops relationships with the players in the program, as well as getting visibility to the high school staff,” Bennecke said. “It allows them to experience different levels of coaching.”
Bennecke’s three sons have been involved in the AYLL program, with one currently in high school, and two others in the AYLL program. The program is entirely volunteer-run, offering valuable leadership and mentorship opportunities for both the high school players and the younger participants.
Assistant Freshmen Coach and former ACHS alumnus Tyler Glassman is entering his third year of coaching. With only one year that he has freshmen players, he thinks that his lack of time to coach the boys is the hardest part of his job.
“I don’t have that much time to develop trust and relationships that are necessary to create a great team,” Glassman said.
Glassman loves attending AYLL nights; he uses AYLL nights to assess the incoming talent in a stress-free environment for the little leaguers.
“Seeing this allows us to better prepare for when they get to the high school level by giving them drills to enhance skills they already have and catch them up on things they are lacking,” Glassman said.
In Glassman’s eyes, he uses AYLL nights to do drills with the little leaguers like the ones on our current varsity team to help them run their program.
“AYLL nights give us the time to do drills with younger kids that we also do with our high school players,” Glassman said. “Giving these younger teams drills that we use daily in our practices will ensure that when the time comes for them to be in our pr
ogram, we can get right into practice instead of teaching new drills all the time.”
Junior Zach Rubin has been playing baseball since he was five years old and is a three-year varsity starter. For his future, he hopes to go to a Division one school such as Eastern Illinois University. Rubin has attended the AYLL nights as a kid and he believes that the practice and time spent helped him learn the proper way to play in ACHS standards.
“It’s good to know coming into high school what coaches expect by the time you get to high school,” Rubin said. “AYLL nights helped me learn how to play Antioch baseball, which translates to the little leaguers learning our program before they enter high school.”
By attending AYLL nights as a little leaguer and now as a player who helps run the nights he hopes by the time he graduates, Antioch will continue to have winning baseball seasons.
AYLL Nights connects little leaguers with the ACHS baseball program, displaying mentorship and skill development. High school players guide Little Leaguers through drills, preparing them for future success while strengthening the baseball community and a shared passion for the game of baseball.