For Californians outside the Central Valley, Tracy is no longer a backwater one-horse cow town — thanks to statewide growth, developers and city leaders.

For college baseball and softball coaches, Tracy is no longer just a stop on the highway where there’s an In-N-Out Burger — thanks in part to successful baseball and softball programs at All-American Sports Academy.

The academy is nothing new — former collegiate and professional head softball coach Debbie Nelson has been teaching fundamentals in Tracy since 1997. But until 2006, the Academy’s travel teams were softball only, and up until this year, All-American had only a single baseball team for 12-and-unders.

So instead of constantly losing local, homegrown talent to expensive or far-flung travel programs across the valley and Bay Area, Nelson decided to find a way to keep them here.

Before summer began, she recruited West High baseball coach Jim Rice, Union City’s Logan High coach John Goulding, and local baseball-coaching luminaries like Fred Kruger and Augie Telly to help start a baseball program for the academy.

“We wanted to let parents know that you can do it here in town,” said Nelson, watching a recent academy clinic at the West High fields. “College coaches stop here in town to watch ballplayers. They want talented, committed people … so we wanted to find a way to not cheat these kids on things that are needed.”

Those “things” are a work ethic, a sense of time management and responsibility in the classroom — as well as a graceful swing and proper batting stance. A player can have a .400 batting average, but won’t see the field unless his grade-point average is 2.75 or above. A player can choose to play football and skip the fall ball season without issue, and there’s a mandatory two-month break in January and February to let young arms and minds rest and recuperate.

Instruction does not stop when players change out of their cleats.

“It makes us better in everything we do,” said Tannner Turner, a member of the 12-and-under team. “They make sure our grades are kept up and talk to us about off-field things. … They help us with what’s going on in our lives.”

On an All-American team, rosters do not fluctuate week-to-week, and parents are not plunking down thousands of dollars to send their sons all around the country. Players can sleep in their own beds. The longest and most expensive season won’t cost a parent more than $1,000. And every member of the organization preaches the magic word: commitment.

“We have players who commit to us — so we commit to them,” said Telly, coach of the 12-and-under (13-and-under after Aug. 1) team. “We maintain our roster … we keep the same kids with us. It builds team chemistry.

“They learn to be loyal to the team and coaches, and with that, we’ll get the wins,” he added. “The record shows that.”

Indeed. All four of the teams posted winning records over the summer, with Telly’s team claiming two Northern California tournament titles — USSSA and BPA. His squad will play in a national tournament at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The overall goal of the program is to create players ready to compete at the next level. That’s one of the trade’s oldest clichés, so Nelson offered an explanation that might be surprising: It’s not all about the game.

“We want to create a complete human being,” she said. “We want them to be productive in their community, in their careers, in their lives. Their love and passion for softball and baseball is a vehicle to get to them.”