Holiday Infield/Catching Clinic

This year's Holiday Infield Clinic will be on Tuesday December 29th from 10am-1pm at Sunny Hills High School in Fullerton, Ca. In addition to focusing on infield fundamentals we are also opening our clinic up to catchers. The infielders will be instructed by UPB Founder Ryan Dambach while the catchers will be instructed by UPB's Director of Catching Instruction Kenny Dobbs. The cost of the clinic is $75 and is open to athletes 14 and up. Anyone interested should contact Ryan Dambach at: ryan@unlimitedperformancebaseball.com.

Holiday Infield Clinic

This year we will be hosting our annual Holiday Infield Clinic. The clinic will be a one day event lasting 2-3 hours depending on attendance. Right now we are trying to get the field reserved but our plan is to either hold the clinic on Saturday December 19th or Sunday January 3rd. Last year we had a great turnout and all of our athletes learned a lot. We will let you know when more info is available. The clinic will be run by UPB founder Ryan Dambach and we hope to have some special guest instructors attending.

UPB Still at 100%

For the second year in a row every freshman athlete that UPB has consistently worked with has made their high school team. In our 2 years of existence UPB has had 100% of their incoming freshman make their high school baseball team. Congratulations to the following athletes:

Trevor Townsend Yorba Linda High School
Tyler Maloney Corona Del Mar High School
Tyler Beutel Mater Dei High School
Carlos Quintana Mater Dei High School


Also a quick player update of two of our college athletes. Taylor Richardson is finishing up his first semester at Oklahoma State University. All reports are that Taylor had an unbelievable fall and just may have won the starting centerfielder job as a true freshman. Alison Kooistra from Boston College is entering her junior year at BC. Going into this fall she was slated to bat 7th for the Screaming Eagles softball team. But after a great offensive fall and a meeting with her coaches where she basically told them to leave her swing alone (I love it) she is now slated to bat second in the line up. A goal she had set for herself at the beginning of the summer. Great job to Taylor, Alison, and our freshman class keep up the good work. We here at UPB are proud of you.

UPB Development Pyramid #2 (General Physical Development)

When an athlete reaches the General Physical Development portion of the pyramid they are beginning to learn about the aspects of their skill however they still don’t take ownership of the development of that skill. They may attend private lessons but once the lesson is over they don’t give what they learned a second thought. There is no extra work done on the part of the athlete and they usually have to start over from square one at every lesson.

You can find athletes at this level in every level of baseball but they are usually found from high school to the major leagues. Their mechanics are better than those at the “Natural Talent” level but they are still below average. Athletes here exhibit a good performance followed by a poor performance. They show flashes of what is possible but they have no real understanding for either their successes or their failures. They may know what they need to do in a particular skill such as “stay back” or “stay inside” but they won’t have an understanding as how to get themselves to execute what it is they need to do.

These athletes usually suffer from the ego mindset. They believe that they are they last performance. Many will lie and over exaggerate their abilities or their accomplishments to fit in or feel like they are the athlete they desire to be. Their self confidence is based on at bat to at bat or inning to inning which means they really don’t have any self confidence. If things go well they feel good if they don’t they feel terrible. They experience extreme highs and lows in both their performance and in their emotions and may be prone to outbursts of anger during games.

They are limited in their thinking and believe that if they hit .300 then this means they are a good player and that they don’t need to improve. As such they may have success for the majority of their lives but when they first begin to experience struggles they usually have nothing to go back to. They will make excuses and ultimately quit because they, “just weren’t good enough”.

In order to move to the next level on the pyramid these athletes need to begin to take ownership of their physical skills. They need to do the extra work on their own and begin to think about what it is they are being taught.