Marlins' P.L.A.Y. clinic a hit with area youth

This story was excerpted from Christina De Nicola's Marlins Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

MIAMI -- Connor Norby, Jesus Tinoco and Griffin Conine might be sidelined by injuries, but they were still able to give back to the community when the Miami Marlins Foundation welcomed 150 kids ages 8-15 from the Boys and Girls Club, Overtown Youth Center and the Kiwanis Club of Little Havana for a baseball clinic on Tuesday morning at loanDepot park.

P.L.A.Y. (Promoting a Lifetime of Activity for Youth) clinics are part of the Professional Baseball Athletic Trainers Society’s PLAY Campaign, a public awareness initiative to combat child obesity and promote healthy living and decisionmaking, including the importance of staying active and maintaining good habits.

“They kept high-fiving me, and some of the kids hit pretty hard,” joked Norby, who recently underwent surgery on his left hand. “When you're a kid at that age, anytime you get to go to a professional stadium, it's pretty cool, and it's for a good cause.”

For two hours, the campers took part in breakout sessions focused on strength and agility -- Home Run Derby, pitching/throwing, duck, duck, goose and races -- learned about healthy lifestyle habits and met a quintet of Marlins: Norby, Tinoco, Conine, Valente Bellozo and Lake Bachar. The clinic was led by Corey Tremble, the Marlins’ director of athletic training and rehabilitation.

“It was just a great morning to spend with the kids,” Tinoco said via interpreter Luis Dorante Jr. “You can feed from that energy that they have. It was very special to spend that time, and a lot of the kids also spoke Spanish, so I was able to go back and forth with the conversations.”

After the workout, the Marlins signed autographs and answered questions from the campers, ranging from their daily routine to their biggest obstacles.

“These things for the kids help a lot for them to see what is a good part of the sport, have fun and keep movement a little bit during the day,” Bellozo said. “And I think that sport helps not only physically but for discipline and learn how to do some things.

“They have a lot of energy. They're still kids, and they want to do a lot of things, but that's us talking to [them] like, ‘Stay in line,’ or there comes the discipline of doing the right things, doing it in the right way, and that helps during all of their lives. If they're going to do a sport or job in whatever they want to do, it's going to help, for sure.”