Will Furniss
Freshman, Ole Miss Infielder
Will Furniss spent his 15th birthday in August 2018 training at Driveline’s Seattle facility. A few months prior, the young slugger from Nacogdoches, Texas didn’t even know what Driveline was.
Furniss’ dad had been researching training opportunities for his son, who had already made a mark on the travel ball circuit and was proving to be a talented ball player at the ripe age of 14. The two came across Driveline, and were intrigued.
“We saw the technology that [Driveline] uses and we don’t have that,” Furniss said. “So we went to Driveline in Seattle, and we loved it. So we decided that we were going to do online training and then hopefully every six months come back and make my swing better, make myself better.”
Furniss admits that it wasn’t love at first sight.. He was young when he went to Driveline to do his first motion capture, and said he wasn’t as open to it as he should have been.
“I was kind of hesitant to listen, just because I didn’t want to mess up anything that I had already worked on,” he said.
But then Furniss started struggling at the plate, and without any answers of his own, he turned to the resources he’d been ignoring in his online training program, including his trainer, Tanner Stokey.
When Furniss asked a few questions and sent over video, Stokey found the problem immediately and sent drills to work on it.
“I was drifting toward the ball, wasn’t staying on my back foot long enough. So he sent me a couple drills,” Furniss said. “I did them for a couple weeks, I swung a lot, because we were going to TCU for a tournament, and scouts were going to be there. I think I hit .600 or .700 in that tournament, and that’s what really opened my eyes. Like this is the real deal, I need to actually start texting my trainers and seeing what drills they have to offer and get to know the technology and get access to their knowledge.”
Furniss really went all in. One of the first orders of business was working on the huge barrel tip he used in his swing.
His big leg kick and barrel tip weren’t syncing up, Driveline trainer Conner Watson explained, and it wasn’t allowing him to drive the ball as much as he should have been.
The work included several drills that Furniss still uses now, in the middle of his freshman season at Ole Miss.
He loves the Big Papi drill, where he uses a big leg kick and at the same time brings his hands down to that lead leg, making sure his barrel lays back as he strides forward to hit.
Watson also wanted him utilizing drills like offset open and step backs – two drills that really worked on him timing up his pre-swing movement.
It’s made him a much more consistent hitter. In August 2021 during a training session at Driveline, Furniss’ average exit velocity was 86 mph. A little less than a year and a half later, in December 2022, it was up over 89 mph. That’s huge for Furniss, Watson said. When the lefty barrels a ball, he’s going to hit it 100 mph. It’s about finding that barrel more often.
That pop has shown up in-game for Furniss this spring at Ole Miss. In his freshman season with the Rebels, Furniss is hitting .268 with a pair of home runs, both coming off the bat at 100+ mph.
Furniss is still looking to get the ball in the air more, though. And he knows just the resource to lean on to do it.
How does he know? Furniss has learned to trust the process. It’s already helped him make his way to the SEC. Where might it take him next?
“Driveline has helped me a lot over my career already,” he said. “I really trust them.”