Since 2021, Eric Krywe has been on a mission to expand baseball in Long Beach and the surrounding communities. Through his Beach Bombers travel baseball program and Beach Baseball youth camps, Krywe has done just that — giving back to the community and cultivating a love of baseball.
Krywe (pronounced CRY-wee), who turned 47 this week, lives and breathes baseball. As a youngster in Greigsville, in western New York, he played in Little League, middle school and high school, and earned a spot as a center fielder on Oswego State University’s team. He began coaching in the Long Beach School District in 2003, has done so at the middle school, junior varsity and varsity levels and is now an assistant coach of the varsity squad at the high school.
When he moved to Long Island 24 years ago, Krywe recalled, he noticed that many kids were migrating to lacrosse during the spring sports season. When the pandemic rocked the community, it gave him the chance to flesh out an idea.
“Baseball has always been a passion of mine,” he said. “I always had the vision of creating a camp to try and bring [the] love back to Long Beach and put baseball on the map.”
His baseball camp, open to grades three through eight, began with about 30 children and has since exploded, hosting 110 participants across two weeks this summer. Meanwhile, the Bombers program, which was created during the first year of the camp, has grown from one team to seven, ranging in age groups from 9-and-under through 15-and-under — and the summer 15U team expands to 16U each fall.
The Bombers squads practice twice a week and play single games, or doubleheaders on weekends, from the spring through the fall.
Lido Beach’s Josh Kaufman coaches the 15U team. Kaufman, 48, fields a squad of 13 players, including his son, Ethan, 15. As the program has grown, he said, so has his team’s sportsmanship and energy.
“They’re all mentally tough,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s 35 degrees and raining, or 105 degrees and humid. They’re fine young men, respectful and a good group.”
Both programs, Krywe said, are intended to use baseball as a vehicle for teaching kids life lessons that extend to life outside the baseball diamond. They emphasize traits including responsibility, punctuality, sportsmanship and teamwork — which parents, such as Island Park resident Jacob Marlin, want their sons to learn.
Marlin’s two sons, Riis, 11, and Lennox, 10, were enrolled in the Island Park Little League before discovering Beach Baseball in 2023. Riis is now on the 11U team, and Lennox is finishing up his first year on the 10U squad.
Both are students in the Island Park School District, and, since the district doesn’t have a high school, they will attend Long Beach High School when they reach ninth grade — another reason Marlin enrolled his sons in the program.
“I wanted them to have those connections with a lot of the Long Beach kids on the teams before they got to high school,” he said. “And I like the fact that these kinds of travel organizations help bring that together.”
Marlin said he has seen plenty of growth in his sons. The camps, he said, give children the chance to learn the sport while still having fun. Travel baseball, he said, helped create structure in his son’s lives.
“One of the reasons why I wanted to kind of get them involved in youth sports and travel baseball is that kind of sense of responsibility and be accountable to your teammates and your coaches,” Marlin said. “It gives them ways to kind of challenge themselves, rather than just go out and waste time and find things to do.”
As Krywe reflected on the baseball programs he’s built, he expressed his appreciation for the coaches for teaching the players how to “play the game the right way.” He recalled the iconic line from the 1989 hit movie “Field of Dreams.”
“The saying is, ‘If you build it, he will come,’” Krywe said. “So I was thinking, ‘If you build it, they will come.’”
For more informaion, visit beachbaseballcamp.com.