Homegrown Investment: FTB Georgia
Over the past four years, I noticed a huge shift in youth travel baseball that focused on winning a tournament and collecting championship rings over fundamental development as a player and a person. Through various collaborations, I started a youth travel ball organizational branch (from an existing group in Florida) that focused on the player’s skills, talent, and character development. I shifted engagement with travel baseball – focusing on family, family time, and community development. My goals for the first year are: 1) Recruit a team of 9U youth players to develop the player and the person. 2) Develop an expectation of the parent’s role, players’ role, and coaches’ role in every aspect of the program. 3) Model development over winning. 4) Coach and develop through understanding the player’s psyche. 5) Have an 85% retention rate over the season and into the next season.
“The goal is to provide an innovation option for youth travel baseball that develops the player on and off the field as a priority.”