I played baseball locally for Meridian High School and American Legion. I pitched and helped Meridian win the 1987 State Championship. I played for great coaches during my high school years; Mo Brooks, Frank Wright, and Roger Wolf. I was part of the great Meridian teams that won State and Regional championships and played in National tournaments.
After High School, I played a year of baseball for BYU Idaho (Ricks College 1987-88) whereupon, 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 career playing for BSU’s club team in 1993.
I love baseball. I think the sport is great for developing young men and women. I attribute baseball for the role it played in my life during my formative years. I spent 7 years coaching MYB baseball and held various positions on MYB’s board of directors and 6 years coaching a competitive club team. I’ve discovered there’s a lot of frustration, not just for parents and their players, but with coaches.
Baseball/Fast-pitch Softball is a unique sport that requires exceptional defensive and offensive skill development along with the ability to successfully compete. These skills must be honed and consistently worked. Unfortunately, working on poor skills create and reinforce 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 where they can develop year round.
Play Deep Academy helps 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 the young player get that “aha” moment when it all clicks and they start hitting with power and “mash” the way they always dreamed. We love seeing the pitcher gain confidence when they achieve mastery in command and gain effective and true velocity increases. We love seeing the catcher shave down their pop-time and realize runners now fear them. We love the fielder whose confidence skyrockets when they learn to read hops and balls off the bat.
Play Deep Academy welcomes parents and involves them in the teaching/learning process. We work with parents and players to determine their goal and then we strive to make that goal a reality. We do an assessment with each player and sit down with parents to explain what we see and what improvements we recommend and are working to create. As our instructors work with players, we explain the why and the how of the drills so parents can review and work with their player between sessions to maximize improvement. We utilize technology but not in a way that we become dependent or overly reliant on the technology. Rather we use it to shorten the learning curve. Players and parents have immediate feedback to know what went wrong or right and what on the spot corrections are needed to get back to proper fundamentals.
Play Deep Academy is designed to help coaches; less time spent working on individual basics and fundamentals means more time for coaches to develop cohesive, competitive teams. Teams become more competitive and successful when individual players develop and get better.
Our mission at Play Deep Academy is to improve young players in the Treasure Valley and to be instrumental in helping more Idaho players play beyond high school.
