Here's the pitch: How a Florida educational choice scholarship helped Cam earn a baseball scholarship

Cameron “Cam” Morgan was 4 when he ran around the living room, touching imaginary bases before stepping on an imaginary home plate.

At 5, he could recite baseball statistics, especially those of his favorite players on his favorite team – the Baltimore Orioles.

Cartoons and Nickelodeon? Nope. ESPN’s SportsCenter and the MLB Network.

Coached by his dad, Joe, Cam was raised on baseball fields. A right-handed pitcher, he played on all-star teams and star-studded travel squads. His goal is to play baseball in college and beyond.

A Florida educational choice scholarship helped Cam reach the first part of that dream.

The 18-year-old who lives in Davenport will attend Pennsylvania Western University – Clarion (formerly Clarion University) this fall on a baseball scholarship.

“He’s had some looks (from Major League teams), but he wants to go to college first,” Joe said. “He wants to get a degree.”

Cam is one of the growing numbers of Florida students whose athletic futures have been enhanced through the state’s education choice programs.

Cam, who graduated from high school in May, was home-educated as a senior. He received a Personal Education Program (PEP) scholarship that comes with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC), managed by Step Up For Students.

PEP is for students who are not enrolled full-time in a public or private school. It functions as an education savings account (ESA), which allows parents to customize their children’s education by allowing them to spend their scholarship funds on various approved, education-related expenses.

Cam used some of his scholarship funds to cover the cost of training at Randy Sullivan’s Florida Baseball ARMory in Lakeland. The ARMory trains pitchers from high school to the major leagues by developing individualized programs to improve velocity and command and to keep their arms healthy.

“They gave him a workout plan and a nutrition plan,” Joe said. “Step Up covered it. Without Step Up, Cam wouldn’t have received the number of opportunities he’s had. It’s amazing. I wish we had known about it earlier.”

Cam attended a charter school through his junior year. He said being home-educated allowed him to focus more of his time on developing as a pitching prospect.

“I like how I could make my own schedule, work at my own pace,” Cam said. “It was one of the better things as far as baseball was concerned.

“Instead of going to school for six hours and then getting two hours a day at practice, I could wake up, go to the gym, and then come home, do schoolwork for a few hours, get a few assignments done, then go practice.”

Cam, who played his senior season at Celebration High School, is 6-foot-2 and weighs 170 pounds. He plans to add some weight, which will help him increase the velocity of his fastball, which, in turn, will make him a better professional prospect. Hence, his workout and nutrition program at the Florida Baseball ARMory.

That’s also the reason he wants to attend college. It will give him a few more years to grow and develop.

He picked Clarion because he could major in psychology, and because, as a native of Maryland, he could return to the Northeast.

His interest in psychology stems from his time on the pitcher’s mound. Cam admitted that he can sometimes lose focus when things do not go his way during a game.

“I can use my major to get an idea of why I act like I do and learn what I can do to fix it,” he said.

It could also lead to a career in sports psychology, he said, if a career in baseball doesn’t work out.

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].