Comments for hardballacademy http://hardballacademy.com "Professional Baseball & Softball Instruction" Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:35:20 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ Comment on Testimonials by hardballacademy http://hardballacademy.com/testimonials/#comment-33 Fri, 02 Mar 2012 05:35:20 +0000 http://hardballacademy.com/?page_id=70#comment-33 I would like to tell you a short story about my son Andy, who I think most of you know. When he was playing Little League Baseball and was at the age (9/10) where they were beginning with kid pitch I brought him to a pitching coach at another organizationto get some instruction on how to pitch. After one lesson the pitching coach basically told me that I was wasting my money trying to get someone to teach my kid how to pitch. Well I didn’t buy what the pitching coach said, because I firmly believe if thekid (or person) wants to do something then they defiantly have potential and will probably be successful. I played baseball as a kid but I didn’t pitch. So I went to the library to gets some books to start learning how to instruct my son how to pitch. Andyand I spent several hours a week working together to try and help him become a better pitcher. Well that year rocked along and I thought he did a fair job of pitching. Then his last year in Little League he got drafted by a coach that called me and said hepicked Andy because he wanted him to pitch. I was kind of surprised, because I thought Andy was basically a fair pitcher and I had thought that we might spend more time this next year working on other baseball skills and back off on the pitching. But Andy’sCoach wanted him to pitch that year. I became a little worried about him hurting his arm and I knew that I really didn’t know that much about pitching to help him excel. So I found Hardball Academy in Pearland and brought him to Richie Beard to learn howto pitch. I was amazed and in awl about all the information we were getting and how well Richie communicated with Andy to help him understand what he needed to do to get his body to pitch correctly. That year it was fantastic to watch my son throw curve balls,change ups, and sliders to fool kids at the plate and strike them out. Andy had a good year at pitching and he had a lot of fun doing it. That same year Andy had hit some out of the park home runs and his same coach told me that I should take Andy somewhereto get some batting lessons. His Coach told me that Andy had the power but that he was really swinging the bat wrong and not doing the mechanics right. So I brought him back to Hardball Academy and this time it was Zak Ellis instructing him how to bat. AgainI was amazed at the information Zak was giving him and how Zak went to great lengths to give Andy examples to explain how he needed to swing the bat and hit the ball. I saw my son start to understand that he doesn’t have to swing the bat as hard as he canto hit a good hit. Before he was doing everything wrong trying to kill the ball and he found out he didn’t have to swing as hard as he could to get a good hit. The rest of that year Andy went on to play Select ball and continued to hit some out of the parkhome runs. However, now when I saw my son walk up to the plate I saw him actually thinking about swinging the bat mechanically right and actually doing it correctly most of the time. The rest of that year he was more successful at getting good hits. My sonAndy also likes to play football and this year we didn’t play fall baseball on a Select team. So I realized that he probably needed some help to get back in the groove of things before baseball season starts. So this time I brought him to the Hardball Academybranch in League City because it was closer to where we live and I got him setup with the instructor Jim Bolt. You’re going to get tired of me saying this, but again I was amazed at how Jim worked with Andy. One night after our lesson with Jim, Andy and Igot in the truck to go home and I just started laughing. Andy asked me what I was laughing about. So I asked him did he not see how everything Jim told him to do, and Andy did it, made him ten times better than before. Then Andy started laughing and startedtelling me how he was impressed by Jim telling him to make a minor modification and he started throwing strikes every time or hitting line-drives every time. It was just amazing to watch Jim work with my son and molding him like he was clay to perform better. I firmly believe my money has been well spent at Hardball Academy and I want to thank all the people at Hardball for their efforts and dedication of working with kids. It’s great to have a place like Hardball to bring your kid to. I have another younger sonand a younger grandson that I plan to bring to Hardball in the future to get the help they need.

Thanks,

Brian Wiesen

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