Best baseball programs at New England Preps

goaliedad
Fri, 17 Aug 2007 14:52:19 +0000

Baseballmom,

You are in a situation similar to what we faced when placing goaliedaughter a year ago - pitchers and goalies being very specialized, every team needing a small but limited number.

I can tell you that walking by the diamond at my D’s school there is a very long list of championships listed in recent years on the sign. You can PM me for specifics as I don’t post my D’s school name on public boards. I know they have a couple of players (not pitchers IIRC) in the majors right now. I’m not sure if these were PG types or multi-year students. I also don’t know the coaches personally, so I cannot give you a specific recommendation as to whether they have what your son wants.

That being said, I’m struggling a bit to find your order of priorities here. It would seem that your primary concern is pitching coaching, followed by success of team with a broad spectrum of academic alternatives to be considered. From this, I’m gathering that your son wants to play college baseball (and probably not Ivy League - from the willingness to consider a broad range of schools) and wants a school where he can boost his academic opportunities reasonably while developing the skills college coaches will recruit.

If that is your order of priorities, it shouldn’t be too hard to get a list of several successful teams and find out where their recent pitchers (who have played more than 1 year - not PGs) have gone onto play. This will tell you if they are developing pitching talent in general. Obviously, this only counts if the pitching coach is a stable member of their faculty (been there a while and going to stay as well).

Another thing to consider is playing time. I know with my D, JV was never an option for 9th grade, with getting varsity playing time being critical (goalies don’t develop on the bench). She was lucky enough to step into a single goalie situation, mind you on a lesser team, but for a 9th grader, that is as good as it gets.

I’m not sure how it is handled with pitchers, but I’m pretty sure that sitting on the bench is also not beneficial to a pitchers development as well. So there may be some tradeoff between how much game time vs. quality of team you son is on.

Being open to a broad range of academic situation is probably a good thing as even though baseball is not a top sport in NE, the competition at the top boarding schools is still quite intense as many kids want to pitch for Ivy League Schools and see top prep schools as one method of getting there.

I hope this is helpful and of course you are welcome to PM if you would like.

GD