Meet Cory

 

 

Question 1: Can you provide an overview of your experience and qualifications in the field of baseball, fitness instruction, and sports facility management? 

Cory: “I have played baseball since I was 3. As I grew up, we learned of a heart defect that I was born with, and I was restricted from playing other sports with vigorous activity like football, basketball, etc. The only sport the doctor cleared me to play was baseball, so baseball and I were tied at the hip, whether we liked it or not. Thankfully, it was my favorite sport, and one that I gravitated to practicing with my brothers mostly anyway. As my career progressed and I hit puberty, being a bigger frame, I received more interest from colleges and pro scouts alike. I was introduced to the coach at one of the top Division 2 baseball programs in the country, Franklin Pierce University in New Hampshire. It is the only wooden bat conference in the country, and the pro scouts who referred me to this program wanted to see me hit with wood. I played as a freshman for Franklin Pierce that year and advanced to the Division 2 College World Series in Sauget, IL.

I ended up transferring to IUP in 2009 to finish my playing career. I then worked for the Flood City Elite travel organization and helped coach and train with them for 3 years. I moved out to Chester County in 2012 and started helping coach travel ball teams on this side of the state. Once MJB Sports opened a bigger facility, I started giving some lessons in 2015.

From there, I have been getting more and more clients and have amassed over 10,000 hours of lesson time. As for fitness, I have a nationally accredited certification from the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM). And for sports facility management, I have a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Sports Management and Business. My wife and I have been running a sports facility for 12 years now.”

 

Question 2: How has your personal experience with overcoming a heart defect and your dedication to baseball shaped your approach to coaching and instructing young athletes? 

 

Cory: “That’s a great question. I ultimately ended up having to have open-heart surgery when I was 13, which was right in the middle of my growth spurt. I had a quick recovery and was cleared to play ball just months after. Life seemed different after the surgery; I took things more seriously and was much more grateful for the smaller things. I was happy to just be allowed to play.

It has helped me realize how fragile life can be. I’m also a servant to this game now because of what it has provided me. The game of baseball has shaped my life every single year for 30 years now, and I’m 34.

It has provided friendships, travel, educational opportunities, life lessons, financial gain, mentorship chances, mental toughness, and much more.”

 

Question 3: How do you incorporate your deep understanding of the game of baseball, gained through years of playing and coaching, into your instructional approach? How do you tailor your coaching to meet the needs of individual athletes? 

 

Cory: “My motivations for my instructional approach stem from much more than just excelling in the game. I am trying to give these young athletes a platform, a stage, and an opportunity to express themselves and, in turn, receive some of life’s most valuable lessons back as their career goes on.

Baseball and softball, maybe just sports in general, have a way of teaching you things that you might not otherwise understand about yourself if you had not pushed yourself to limits within sport. My passion to instruct is incredibly detail-oriented, and I have applied this detailed approach to ensure that I’m doing my best to keep the student successful in the game for as long as possible.

If I’m successful in that, the game itself will provide its many blessings and opportunities to these youths as it did to me and many others. Providing a consultative, mentor, and companion style in my lessons helps me layer in life lessons along with sport-specific lessons.”

 

Question 4: How do you incorporate technology and modern tools into your coaching and instruction? How does this enhance the learning experience for your students? 

 

Cory: “I am an analytical thinker at heart. In my everyday life, technology that captures data or automates otherwise menial tasks is why my wife might call me a nerd. Bringing that style into my lessons has helped me to understand my students and their game at a much deeper level, but the biggest difference has been being able to point to objective data and trends to prove what we think is the main priority for advancing. With more advanced athletes, subjective thoughts and goals won’t hold up over the long haul.

I have found that, from my more competitive students, there is a need or a want for the hard work and dedication to show, display, and track results objectively. Some of the technology that gets brought out during our journey helps to refine and modify some of our adjustments that we’re asking our students to make.

Understanding all of the pieces of the puzzle individually can be a daunting task for students, parents, or new instructors. I love to talk through those pieces and then create plans for how those pieces will ultimately be placed together to get our girls and guys to their goal.”

 

Question 5: How do you balance the importance of fundamentals and skill development with fostering a love and enjoyment for the game of baseball among your students? 

 

Cory: “Sheesh, these questions are good. I haven’t put it into words in the past, but I think about this idea quite often. It comes up in the daily routine of our schedules more times than some from the outside looking in would care to take note of. There is a really fine line that I still push myself to squint and look for in the sand on this topic.

Each student is going to have different goals, wants, needs, backgrounds, and futures. When you look at it from a zoomed-out view like we are now, that seems easy to navigate and understand. But when you’re in a 30-minute session with these kids, many of them are going through things that they don’t always want to share.

Being someone or providing an environment really, as an outlet to bounce ideas off of, share personal stories with, talk through the failures that are guaranteed to arise, is an invaluable asset to a young person these days. It cannot be understated that putting the phone down and talking through issues face to face that are either real or perceived has a tremendous positive effect for these students.

Talking through the minor adjustments of bodily movement to create something that has value on the field of play is a gift that I give to my students, but I will go down with the ship with the view that this game will someday be taken from you and what remains is what we really strive to give back to the community.

The mental toughness, the coping strategies, the friendships, the physical fitness, the time management skills, the emotional awareness; these are the things that have to be part of the time with coaches. Being able to teach the technicalities of a specific sport movement is the easy part, creating a trusting relationship for the other things I just mentioned is the harder part!”

 

Question 6: How do you approach character development and instilling important life lessons through your coaching and instruction? How do you encourage personal growth and resilience in your students?

Cory: “In many scenarios, the truth is that it depends on a wide range of factors that we, as coaches, have to be aware of and process before approaching this topic. Every coach on social media or TV wants to show their work with the athletes that have success on the field because that’s what brings money to the program or through the doors. I would rather invest my time in a coach that brings up all of their clientele in a way that all of them can be proud to have trained in such an environment.

Daily coaching and instruction have very little success to market out to the public in such a small scope. Just look at the percentage chance that a high school athlete will go on to the next level in their sport. The numbers are low, and the odds are not in your favor. Not everyone coming through our doors even has the goals to play competitively, but they are still there to better themselves, and we know for sure that, as parents, we are happy to have someone help better our children.

We coach through planned failure – we put students in positions to either push themselves through to learn something new or to ultimately fail and run out of time for that day. Through these failures, any person finds growth, and our students are no different. Failure, difficulty, and perseverance are tools that we use to ensure students are learning rather than just practicing or going through the motions.”

 

Question 7: How do you foster a positive and supportive environment for your students, encouraging teamwork, sportsmanship, and a sense of community within your training sessions?

Cory: “I find myself being strict with my students whenever they have a bit of a mental breakdown. Throwing equipment, negative self-talk, banging bats, and dramatizing failures are not something that I have found to be conducive to learning or personal growth, so I have worked as a coach to ensure that I don’t let students get away with it without offering up other coping mechanisms.

Providing a safe environment to fail is an oxymoron in itself. However, I do stand by that statement. There is something poetic about looking someone in the eyes and telling them that this is a place where failure is okay. Every single person I’ve ever worked with WANTS to do well. Of course, they are not doing things to negatively affect their game on purpose, but when that failure gets in the way of advancing forward, the road to success lengthens.

Letting our students know that failure is guaranteed and that in those failures is where we are looking for the changes necessary for growth.”

 

Question 8: How do you encourage open communication and collaboration between yourself, your students, and their parents or guardians? How do you ensure that everyone is on the same page and working towards the same goals?

Cory: “It’s an absolute open-door invitation to take a bigger role in your child’s time with me as a coach by any means you see fit. That usually means different things for a wide array of clients but is not limited to:

sitting closely to ensure you can hear some of the techniques, indicators, and strategies (without being intrusive or distracting),

Recording integral parts of the session to playback for reference at home while reinforcing (without posting on socials)

Reviewing some of the data recorded by technology used in the session,

Ensuring questions and comments that came up in between sessions are asked and clarified through text, email, or in the facility during training,

Recording games, live reps, and practice routines to bring back to the coaches to stay on track for training priorities.

Parents have an overwhelming amount on their plates, and they are required to do so much more than just provide good values, principles, and examples to their kids. Now, parents have to find the right sports, the right teams, the right coaches, the right schedules, and all of this is happening with ever-changing goals for the child as they grow and mature.

Without getting too far into all of those details, I openly accept my responsibility to be a small part of all of those moving targets as a parent attempts to manage their child’s amateur career. I want to make it as easy as possible to lay out a clear view to reach the goals of the parents and the child.”

 

Question 9: How do you stay updated with the latest trends, techniques, and advancements in the field of baseball instruction? How do you ensure that your coaching methods align with current best practices?

Cory: “I naturally find myself studying motion mechanics in sport as a passion, regardless of whether I had the responsibility of teaching it back to a community.

I like to find the nuances that might set some athletes apart from others. Comparing data, watching and applying elite movement patterns, and reading into the details about fitness, nutrition, recovery, hydration, and sleep have been recent tools utilized in my tool belt. As a naturally curious person, I tend to want to learn more and more about things I’m interested in. One of the most interesting things that it seems the general public and athletes put less emphasis on is flexibility, range of motion, and freedom of motion.

These have been on the forefront of my reading list because it is something that I feel I can personally adapt to incorporate into our routines with our athletes, and we’re excited to roll out these programs.”

 

Question 10: What sets you apart as a baseball instructor, and why should aspiring athletes and their parents choose your coaching services?

Cory: “Coaching athletes is something that I am incredibly grateful to be able to take part in at the level that I am today. There are so many layers to peel back before you could really understand the different coaches and coaching that exists today.

I would attempt to explain why someone might want to choose me or our coaching services for their family by listing a few of the many different hats that we’re required to wear during the period of one day. Some clients need us to be their technical instructor, some need us to be their practice facility, some need us to be their leader by example, some need us to be their mentor, some need us to be their counselor.

Having the understanding and empathy to even know which hat to put on during the course of training is a skill in itself that we find we excel in based on feedback from close clients. Possessing the technical know-how, background, environment, tools, and passion to even attempt to help young athletes reach their goal is a skill set that would be seen as rare for any community. We think we have the personnel to get athletes trained up to reach the goals that they’re aware of and, most importantly, pull more out of them to accomplish goals that they never thought possible for themselves.

Speaking from personal experience, this is exactly why I’m passionate about what we do here because someone pulled me off to the side and showed me a life that is possible with sports. The opportunities it has provided me are so drastically different than the path I was on that I now feel it is my life’s goal to try to give that to other people.

The programs we create have this passion at their core, and the hope is that the coaching provided will keep this core belief alive through the next generation of athletes.”