Coaching Philosophy

Notice we said ‘different’, not ‘better’. We are a nonprofit and operate as such. No person(s) is trying to monetize children to make a living. We are all very happy with our full-time jobs. This allows any excess funds to be reinvested back into the program, so that players can have more experiences.

Our professional baseball coaches sets practice agendas and establishes the drills and areas of focus for our teams. A 7U team needs something different then a 9U and even a 14U team.

Our professional softball coaches set practice agendas and establishes the drills and areas of focus for our teams.

This is going to hurt some feelings: the physical act of throwing, hitting, catching, agility and mental toughness is the same between baseball and softball. The strategy of how it is implemented is different, which is why we have independent coaches. Working on similar fundamentals means the families in the program can now have brothers and sisters work together at the house to get more reps in. Complicated messages does not help them become better players.

Lets face it, all programs use parents to help coach the kids. Our program is not set up to be a US National organization and if that is the experience you are looking for we are not the right place. We encourage parents to help in practice as long as they provide a positive experience and can follow the directions of our professional coaches.

Coach Nate and Coach Biggerstaff both coach teams in practice and on tournament weekends. They do not have a child on any team. All decisions are made by the head coach.

Data enhances decision making when implemented correctly. Fortunately, our program has resident “nerds” who have advanced degrees in mathematics and engineering to do the number crunching for us.

This allows us to have a custom hitting plan for each player. Velocity measurements through various stages of hitting, pitching and throwing allows targeted development. Entire teams working on the same drill isn’t the best use of time.

As an example, HitTrax and Rapsodo based technologies are just high-speed cameras that take multiple pictures, calculate the difference of the ball over a short amount of time and plug it into a math model. It’s great to get a number but if you don’t know how to apply it to the targeted development what does it really say? Driving a car 100 miles an hour away from your destination doesn’t get you to your destination.

As part of game management our professional coaches and the organization establish acceptable playing positions for players. We record playing positions by the inning so there is a record of what positions players are playing and how often they are playing them.

Players are evaluated independently, and the organization takes player position allocation seriously.

All playing time, line up and positions are determined by the coach. They are determined based on strategy of the game, what they have observed in practice and how they have been performing in games. Let’s face it, many of the kids also need help with their mental approach to the game so a bad attitude earns them a spot on the bench.

We want the kids to excel on the field. Friendships solidify the team. We want players to support and encourage each other on and off the field. We run family nights where we bring everyone out to the facility and have a cookout or some type of event to integrate teams and their families.

We try whenever possible to put all our baseball on the same weekend, so there is always a friendly face to talk with and another chance for the players to interact. Softball is played on opposite weekends whenever possible, so families are not conflicted on which child to support.

We know these kids can’t drive themselves to practice. Having all our teams practice on Wednesdays, hold optional field practice on nonplaying Sundays and an indoor time 1 day a week allows players to get their reps in but also gives families more time to spend together.

We have a lot of families with multiple players in the program. We do the absolute best we can to minimize conflicts with practice and game schedules. These families also receive 20% off the organization costs.