Mayhem Media Day gets young athletes feeling like pros

It was the first of its kind event at the Coleman Country Day Camp in Freeport last week, as Mayhem Baseball welcomed in troves of young athletes for Mayhem Media Day. The event allowed baseball and softball players to feel like they were professional players, and fostered team spirit, as they embark on their 2024 season.

Mayhem Baseball, which was founded five years ago as Merrick Mayhem, is a travel program, that has drastically increased in size since 2019. While a lot of its players are concentrated to the Merrick-Bellmore area, the program’s name is now more inclusive, and represents the full breadth of the South Shore communities it represents. Every year, as the program grows, more kids are joining the program from surrounding towns, Brian Mann, one of Mayhem’s co-founders, told the Herald.

Over the course of 5-hours on March 29, Mayhem welcomed its 19 teams through winter training facilities at Coleman.

“16 baseball teams, 3 softball teams,” Mann said. “They’re coming in and they’re doing their photos, and then they’re doing an infield workout. Then they move over to the press conference area. Really, the thought behind today is the Super Bowl has a media day, so we wanted to do a media day for the organization ahead of our season which starts tomorrow. This is just something fun for the kids.”

Each team spent about an hour in the facility, which is where the teams train during the winter, as Coleman is a sponsor of Mayhem Baseball.

“We do a lot of indoor workouts here in the winter,” Mann said, “and our teams also train indoors at various facilities in the area.”

The spring season started this week, and will go through the summer, Mann explained. After a reset, teams will continue playing throughout fall, ending in November. Mayhem Baseball competes against a lot of Nassau and Suffolk County programs, but also a lot of other teams throughout the northeast region.

Tryouts for the 2025 season will take place sometime in the fall, but that doesn’t mean that there’s not earlier opportunities to join ‘s teams.

“We’re always looking for players,” Mann said. “We can be reached through our website for any information at any time. We’re always looking to add pieces here and there.”

There will be a smaller tryout in August, ahead of the fall season, and a larger tryout in October and November for teams next year. 

Looking ahead, Mayhem will be working this season to expand its softball program.

“We are starting this year to really build out softball program,” Mann explained. “We’re going to start to build the softball side of the organization, the same way we built baseball, which will be good for not only our organization, but for the level of play for the town. We’re excited.”

As for Mayhem Media Day, it was all about trying something different.

“We are always kind of thinking of things to offer our families, something different versus other travel organizations out there,” he said. “The idea is to kick off the season, in a way where we’re making the kids feel like they’re professional players for a day.”

For more on Mayhem baseball, and to learn more about the program this season and what’s to come, visit MerrickMayhem.com.