I played baseball locally for Meridian High School. I was mostly a pitcher in high school. I was the starting and finishing pitcher for the 1987 State Championship for Meridian High School. I played for Mo Brooks, Frank Wright, and Roger Wolf in the year I played high school baseball. I was a part of the great Meridian Baseball teams that won State, Regional championships and played in Nationals.
After High School, I played a year of baseball for BYU Idaho (Ricks College-1987-88). I left college, and joined the US Army. I played for the division baseball team while assigned to the 101st Airborne Division. I concluded my baseball playing by playing a year for BSU’s club team.
I’ve always loved the sport of baseball. I think it is a great activity for young men and women. I attribute baseball for the role in played in my life during my formative years. I spent the last 7 years coaching MYB baseball and held various positions on MYB’s board of directors. I’ve discovered there is a lot of frustration; not just for parents and their players but for coaches as well.
Baseball/Fast-pitch Softball is a unique sport that requires exceptional defensive and offensive skill development and ability to successfully compete. These skills must be honed and consistently worked. Unfortunately, working poor skills only creates and reinforces bad habits that are extremely hard and frustrating to change. Consequently, good skill development is learned and reinforced through instruction and, for cold weather states like Idaho, access to indoor facilities.
Play Deep Academy was established to help players, parents, and coaches. The Academy provides young players with access to a great, indoor facility with the best instruction available. Academy instructors are passionate about the sport and about helping young players develop. We love seeing a young player get that “aha” moment when it all clicks and they find out how to squaring up a pitch with power and start mashing the way they always dreamed. We love seeing the pitcher gain confidence when they achieve mastery in command and achieve effective and true velocity increases. We love seeing the catcher shave down their pop-time and knowing runners will fear them. We love the fielder whose confidence sky rockets when they learn to read hops.
We welcome parents and involve them in the teaching process. We determine what their goal is for their young player. We do an assessment with each player and sit down with the parent to explain what we see and what improvements we recommend. As our instructors work with players we explain the why and the how of the drills they do so parents they can review and work with their player between sessions to maximize improvement. We utilize technology. Not in a way that we become dependent upon or overly reliant. Rather we use technology to shorten the learning curve. Players and parents have immediate feedback to know what went wrong or right and on the spot corrections made to get back to proper fundamentals.
Play Deep Academy was established to help coaches. Less time spent working on individual basics and fundamentals means more time for coaches to develop the cohesive, competitive team. Teams become more competitive and successful when individual players develop.
