Cody Zachariasen, College Hitter
Cody Zachariasen made the decision in the spring of 2023 that he had more in him than playing club baseball at UC Santa Barbara.
He wanted to play baseball as well and as long as possible. The problem was that he hadn’t had access to the right kind of training to make that happen. That changed when he decided to train at Driveline.
“His training age was very young,” Driveline hitting trainer Travis Fitta said of Zachariasen when he first arrived at Driveline. “He had never really done anything more than front toss BP, hit with the team sort of stuff. Coming into Driveline last April was a really good start for him to say, ‘I need to change things up if I want to have a chance to succeed.”
To Fitta’s point, Zachariasen had never seen anything like Driveline before. To go from a land of front toss to a land of weighted bats and motion captures will change the way a player views the game of baseball.
Cody Zachariasen - April 2023
“It was night and day,” Zachariasen said. “I grew up in a small town playing small town baseball. No one really knew what they were doing in terms of coaching and player development. So we were all figuring it out on our own, basically. Being able to come here and see real baseball for the first time was game-changing. It was incredible.”
Zachariasen swung the bat slowly when he first arrived, right around 63 mph. He had never trained bat speed before, because he didn’t know how important it was until it was explained to him.
He familiarized himself with Driveline’s bat speed trainers right away, and then wouldn’t let them out of his sight.
The dedication worked. After a year at Driveline, Zachariasen has gained a ridiculous 12 mph in average bat speed, swinging it around 75 mph these days.
“I have a hard time wrapping my head around it sometimes,” he said. “I’ve just really been hammering the idea of moving faster and getting my body to produce force and moving that force into the bat. That’s spending a lot of time with the weighted bats, hitting Smash balls, and just focusing on moving as fast as possible.”
Zachariasen can look back now and hardly recognize the hitter who walked into Driveline for the first time.
But he’s also the first to admit it wasn’t an easy process. There was struggle during his year of training.
Let Fitta explain.
“He basically spent his first year here getting his ass kicked,” he said. “There were moments where he was ready to shut it down and hang it up…But we never gave up on him, and he never gave up on himself.”
Putting yourself in an environment so far outside of your comfort zone can do that. And on top of it, Zachariasen dealt with his fair share of injuries. To his hand, his thumb, his leg. Pushing yourself harder than you’ve ever pushed yourself can do that.
Why keep going, then?
“I’ve spent so much time and come so far already, I’m not going to let an injury stop me from the track that I’ve put myself on,” Zachariasen said. “I’ve come so far down that path that nothing’s really going to get in my way. All I’ve ever wanted to do, since I was a little kid growing up, is play baseball. So there’s not a whole lot that’s going to stop me from doing that.”
Cody Zachariasen - February 2024
Especially not now that he’s getting a taste of real baseball. Turns out, real baseball is a lot of fun.
“After [a recent] session, he looked at me and said, ‘I’ve worked for 12 months to feel like this,’” Fitta said. “And he literally couldn’t stop smiling.”