For a baseball catcher to be successful, they should possess a nice mix of hard skills and soft skills.

Same goes for many other jobs. Take nuclear engineer, for example.

A successful reactor-head needs hard skills such as proficiency in multivariable calculus, applied thermodynamics and kinetic theory.

That same nukey also needs soft skills. Things like looking people in the eye when speaking to them, the ability to disagree without being disagreeable, and remembering the names of the boss’s kids.

Hard skills for baseball catchers are pretty simple. Framing pitches, situational awareness and a howitzer for an arm.

Soft skills? Even simpler — be a decent, respectful human.

This hard-skills, soft-skills catching roadmap is the brainchild of Liam Pope. Most know Pope as the Blackfoot soccer coach. Still others know him as the former head Broncos baseball coach.

Today, Pope helps out with the Blackfoot baseball team in the spring and spends his summers picking up umpiring gigs.

Pope has seen some catchers in his day, and as an umpire, he’s a big fan of the hard-skills, soft-skills balance young Jake Vance brings to the dish.

“Some catchers want to fight you,” Pope said. “Jake is the kind of catcher who works with you, not against you.”

Vance is part of the catching corps for the Gate City Grays. Along with teammate and former Sugar-Salem standout Tommy Woodcock, the Grays are set up for success whenever the doubleheader bell rings.

“The Grays are in the best catching position ever,” Pope said. “I mean, they have Tommy and Jake, and that’s a dreamland situation.”

Pope maintains that catchers who work with the plate umpire are — at a minimum — not hurting their teams. Keeping basic respect and engaging in honest, direct communication is the type of soft skills a catcher needs. The exact soft skills Jake Vance has.

“It’s not a true partnership, because the umpire is neutral,” Pope said. “But a good catcher is a good communicator. When they’re framing the ball and they want that strike call, the ump has to be able to say to the catcher, ‘I thought that was just outside. Bring that in an inch and you’ve got that.’”

Woodcock took his talents south after graduation, setting up behind the plate for South Mountain in Phoenix.

Vance, on the other hand, is currently realizing a dream he had as a Blackfoot sophomore — a dream to play for the Gate City Grays.

Vance was playing ball for Blackfoot just three months ago, and comes to the Grays bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Playing for the Grays was kind of always in the cards for Vance, especially considering his big brother, Tyler Vance, was in the building.

“I decided two years ago I was going to come play with the Grays,” Jake said. “I was really excited to play here, especially knowing my brother was going to play. That was a big push for me.”

Both Jake Vance and Woodcock celebrated the casual community atmosphere that dominates evenings at Halliwell Park, the Gate City Grays’ home field. Players walk among the fans outside the fences, signing mitts and balls for smiling youngsters.

When the team has fun promotions to take up the space between doubleheaders, many of the players engage directly. For example, the Grays had a Yoga Night this past Saturday, and players were out in shallow right field doing the swan, the cobra and the downward dog alongside fans.

Jake Vance missed out on the yoga lesson as he was busy getting the Game 2 pitcher ready. But Woodcock and a bunch of his teammates were out there with the fans.

“This environment always just kind of blows me away a little bit,” Tommy said. “We get to play some college ball and then come back and represent our little areas. I’m grateful for the opportunity to be out here tonight.”