College Prep Program – Week 1

Wildcats Baseball is excited to launch our high-performance College Preparatory Program. Starting September 1 and running till August, the players that have been accepted to the college prep program will benefit from a focussed, high commitment program designed to help them achieve their goal of furthering their playing careers into post-secondary and beyond. Our dedicated team of coaches is excited to help the next generation of college athletes utilizing a wide variety of training resources, programs, and small group practice sessions. Our training will be run out of Webber Academy for the first 6 months with the ability to transition from the batting cages, to fielding practice, to the weight room in a matter of minutes, players will be able to maximize the effectiveness of their training time.

With the Wildcats fall season right around the corner here’s what you need to know about our program. Starting August 28th our players will begin their initial assessments with ORKA Performance and begin their personalized training program. The team at ORKA will work with athletes on the fundamental movement skills and strength required to take their baseball skills to the next level. Our College Prep Program, athletes will be screened and tested by ORKA on a variety of health and performance indicators. This will help craft the right strength and conditioning programs for their bodies and positions. Regular follow ups will ensure athletes will remain on track with their fitness goals and help them stay on the field year round!  Finally, the professionals at ORKA are available for single team sessions to work on anything from movement patterns to running technique. With a shared commitment to small group individualized training we couldn’t be more excited to get to work with the ORKA team. For more information on ORKA’s College Prep Program please click here, and for more information on ORKA’s Athlete Development Program please visit their website here.

Starting September 1st players will start working into their small groups for individualized baseball specific training. Day one is our Rapsodo test day, all players will be outfitted with their Rapsodo account and run through a training session to collect their day one data. Moving forward September 3rd – 5th we are entering the program in the Keith Jorgensen Memorial Tournament. This is the first of two tournaments we will be participating in. The coaching staff at Wildcats are changing the way youth sports has approached fall baseball training. For example, in the fall, training will run similar to the approach that MLB and collegiate baseball athletes are taking in their off-season. High-intensity Live At Bats for pitchers and hitters, structured workout plans focussing on moving better as an athlete, and taking a deeper dive into maximizing performance in the key skills that define success at the next level. 

During the winter months, strength and conditioning take a bigger role to improve power on both sides of the field. Players will be working directly with ORKA performance with updated workout plans to further improve their development as baseball players. There will also be continued use of Rapsodo training days to track players progress and make adjustments to their training program as required. In addition, we will be implementing weighted bat and ball training for all players to increase throwing velocity and bat speed. We are extremely excited about these programs as we’ve seen a massive need for this type of training in the youth baseball scene. Finally, the summer is dedicated to getting in as many games as possible to fine-tune and exhibit your ability as an athlete. 

An exciting part of our program is our coaches dedication to post-secondary education and finding our players the right fit for University or college baseball. Along with consistent training updates using the Rapsodo technology our coaching staff will create player profiles, and recruitment videos for players to send to college coaches. We will also be running seminars for the college prep program players and families to better understand the college baseball recruitment and post-recruitment process as well as smaller seminars dedicated to learning how to write emails to coaches and market yourself as a player and a student. Finally, in the ever-expanding world of social media and online relationships our staff will work with players to develop professional social media profiles that can be used to communicate with college coaches. 

We can’t wait to get the season underway and we can’t wait to see your Wildcat pride.