Before there can be a league, there must be coaches. Before coaches, there must be people willing to learn. And before all of that, someone has to believe that baseball and softball can truly take root on an island where basketball courts outnumber diamonds by a ratio too wide to count. Coach Merv believes. And starting Monday, June 21, he intends to prove it.

The Bohol Coconuts Youth Baseball and Softball Club is launching its inaugural Youth Baseball and Softball Coach Trainee Program, a structured curriculum designed to develop 20 to 30 native Filipino baseball and softball coaches from the ground up.

The program begins June 21 and runs every Monday and Thursday evening, with Coach Merv leading a 90-minute session from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Snacks will be provided at the close of each class.

The coaching program is not a standalone initiative. It is the cornerstone of a far more ambitious architecture. The Coconuts envision a complete baseball and softball ecosystem on Bohol.

None of that infrastructure is sustainable without coaches. The Coconuts are actively recruiting Japanese and other foreign baseball and softball coaches to assist in training youth club members, bringing international expertise to Bohol’s developing baseball community.

However, the Coconuts are equally focused on something harder to import: local knowledge, local buy-in, and local ownership of the sport.

When it comes to who he wants in that room on June 21, Coach Merv has a clear and perhaps surprising target profile. He is looking for two distinct groups of people.

The first group is straightforward: young Filipino men and women between the ages of 21 and 29 who have a passion for sports and a willingness to learn. These are the next generation of coaches who could carry the sport forward for decades.

It is a bold and unorthodox connection, but not an illogical one.

The mental disciplines involved in rooster conditioning — patience, attention to behavioral cues, competitive preparation, and the cultivation of competitive instinct — translate with surprising precision to the demands of coaching young athletes in a skill-intensive sport like baseball.

The Philippines is a basketball nation. That reality is not lost on Coach Merv, whose son SJ plays collegiate basketball in Manila. Courts are everywhere. The sport is embedded in the culture at every level. Coach Merv is not fighting that.

The argument is simple: the Philippines does not have a dominant secondary sport the way that soccer crowds out baseball in Europe, Latin America, and some Asian nations. That creates a lane. A real one. And baseball, Coach Merv insists, is uniquely positioned to drive through it.

That dual message is at the heart of the Coconuts’ youth philosophy. Baseball’s inclusive nature makes it accessible to a broad range of kids. But the club is not simply building recreational opportunities.

Coach Merv and the foreign coaches will identify and enroll the highest-level youth players in the Coconuts All-Star Program, a dedicated track designed to develop elite young talent on the island.

While the Coconuts are headquartered in the municipality of Baclayon, the club’s reach is not confined to its home base. Island-wide tryouts are planned, ensuring that the most talented young players across Bohol have a path to the All-Star Program regardless of where they live.

The club also plans to extend the sport into elementary schools by donating plastic bats and softee balls, and by offering free instructional seminars to physical education teachers across the island.

The goal is to plant seeds early, giving young students their first exposure to baseball and softball through their regular school curriculum.

What the Coconuts are not planning is Baseball5, the streamlined street-baseball format promoted internationally as an entry point to the sport. Coach Merv’s position on this is direct.

Behind the scenes, the groundwork is already being laid at the institutional level.

Cambanac Barangay Council kagawad Lerma Moore has been conducting preliminary talks with municipal officials regarding the Coconuts’ plans to sponsor several high school baseball and softball tournaments across Bohol, including an island-wide tournament modeled after Japan’s National High School Baseball Championship, known to the world as Summer Koshien.

The ambition of that reference is not incidental. The Summer Koshien is more than a tournament. It is a cultural institution in Japan, drawing national television audiences. Invoking it speaks to what the Coconuts believe Bohol’s high school baseball scene could eventually become.

What the Coconuts are attempting in Bohol is not simply the introduction of a sport. It is the construction of a complete sporting culture, built layer by layer.

The plan has coaches trained by coaches, young players identified and developed, school programs seeded with equipment and instruction, tournaments created to showcase talent, and leagues established to sustain both youth and adult participation.

The coach trainee program that begins on June 21 is the first brick in that foundation. Twenty to thirty Filipinos will enter that room this summer with varying backgrounds and zero guaranteed outcomes.

Coach Merv expects some may build the baseball and softball leagues that give men and women on the island a competitive athletic home. Some may simply pass on a love for the game to one kid who needed it.

All of it starts on a Monday evening in Baclayon at 7 o’clock.