Driveline Academy Youth Baseball Teams – coming in 2020
Get better at baseball – Learn skills that scale – Have as much fun as possible along the way
All at an affordable price – for players 10U-18U
Keep Baseball Fun
Youth baseball needs to stay fun so we make having fun when playing baseball a priority, with games in training that drive skill improvement, competition, leadership and a deep love for the game.
Be A Better Baseball Player
We build great baseball players because we work with the best baseball players in the world and distill that information into an effective long term development program for youth players.
Learn The Skills That Scale
Success over the long term means setting players up for success on a big field by focusing on moving fast, throwing hard, moving the bat fast and hitting the ball hard. Our training constantly reflects this.
ELITE TRAINING
Driveline training makes good players great, and great players elite, across all levels of professional, collegiate and amateur baseball. Our youth training utilizes the same systems, scaled to the unique needs of youth players.
Over the last decade we’ve gained massive amounts of information about how elite athletes perform. At the Driveline Baseball Youth Academy we take the principles of working with the best baseball athletes in the world and create game environments for youth players that are fun, engaging, and drive players to improve.
ELITE TRAINERS
Our trainers know exactly what it means to play high level baseball and what it takes to train players at the highest levels of competition.
Whether using technology to understand what a player needs to improve, or using their experience to understand what it’s like to be a kid that loves the game, our Driveline Academy trainers help youth players develop the skills that matter the most over the long term.
ELITE RESULTS
We help our youth athletes get better about the things that matter most in the game of baseball. We measure what matters developmentally for youth players, which helps our trainers stay accountable to our athletes and it keeps our athletes inspired because they know their hard work is paying off.
DRIVELINE ACADEMY SCHEDULE
Our Driveline Academy Youth Teams are currently full for the 2020-21 season with limited space available.
The general outline of the Academy schedule for 2021-22 is as follows:
- Driveline Academy Introduction Sessions (July – September)
- Small Group Training + Presentations by Driveline Staff on Team structure, training protocol & open forum for questions by parents and players. Teams will be formed at the end of September.
- Off-season Training (October – February)
- October – Post throwing shut down on-boarding
- November through December – Focus on building a Strength & Movement Foundation and Throwing Development
- January through February – Focus on Team Defense, Hitting Development and Game Performance Development
- Community / Exploratory Season (March – May)
- 12U And Lower –– Community Season – Players are encouraged to play recreational baseball with their friends in their neighborhoods.
- 13U & 14U – Exploratory Season – 13U & 14U teams will have intermittent tournaments scheduled around this time, while still training in the gym.
- 15U and Higher – HS Baseball Season
- Tournament Season (June – July)
- All Ages – During this period we schedule the majority of our most important tournaments. These tournaments will all be within the states of Washington to minimize the travel cost on our player’s and their families
DRIVELINE ACADEMY CONSTITUTION
What follows is our Driveline Academy Constitution. We are making this document publicly available so that players and parents can understand exactly what we are about.
THE DRIVELINE ACADEMY MISSION
- Keep baseball fun
- Help our players with baseball dreams reach their goals
- Translate the habits and dedication required for success on the field into success in life
Everything else is secondary.
WHAT WE ARE / WHAT WE ARE NOT
We are responsible for helping our players to love the game, building skills for success in athletics and positive habits for success in life.
We are going to win. And we are going to win by developing the best baseball players over the long term.
We are developmentally focused, which means that our training is oriented around building well-rounded ballplayers, and that our teams will carry larger rosters to make sure pitching and playing workloads are effectively balanced.
We are not going to take shortcuts to win now at the expense of development.
We will not make short-sighted choices about our players’ health, and will pull a team out of a tournament before we overwork any player.
We do not need one of our players to pitch just one more inning, one more game or one more out to try to win a game that no one will remember in 6 months or 6 weeks, and does nothing to improve their long term prospects or short term health.
LONG-TERM ATHLETIC DEVELOPMENT
Short term success in youth and amateur baseball that comes at the expense of long term athletic development is a trap.
We build skills that scale as players grow in the game and transition from youth sized fields to adult-sized fields, from lower levels of competition to higher.
Our training systems drive players to master their mechanics, not someone else’s. We won’t cookie-cut anyone’s training – much less a kid that is still growing into their own body. Our training for youth players is designed to help them:
- Have Fun
- Be a Better Baseball Player
- Learn Skills That Scale For Life
Players on Driveline Academy baseball teams play a lot of skill games during training and a reasonable number of games on the field over the course of a season. We use data to track development, make games out of training and give players information on their outputs instead of letting them be defined by a box score outcome.
We measure what matters, let players know exactly how they’re developing over time, and hold our coaches accountable to ensure they are.
PHYSICAL AND EMOTIONAL HEALTH
We are research-driven. This means that we abide by MLB Pitch Smart guidelines even in tournaments that do not, or we use our own guidelines for safe player workloads that are based on data. We track throwing efficiency over time, we track total throwing volume – not just pitches from the mound – and we constantly monitor throwing velocity to ensure our players aren’t throwing while fatigued.
Progressive development of younger hitters does not mean putting them through the same volume of work that older amateur, collegiate, or professional hitters go through. It means creating environments that – through deliberate practice – drive the development of movement speed, intention, and confidence.
We keep baseball fun by prioritizing having fun playing baseball. We don’t need our players to win at any cost. We want them to win by being better athletes, loving the game, and seeing the value of their hard work.