Hello, my name is Jon Pallone, I’m the Varsity Baseball Coach at Quakertown Community High School. This is my 11th year as the varsity coach, but I’ve been coaching 18 years at the high school level for school as well as summer and fall ball. The past three summers I coached a QYBA travel team from 10U through 12U this past season. 

Goals: I love the game of baseball, I love the learning and development process, and I love this community. My goal for this blog is to help educate parents and players a little bit at a time to make for the best experience for a long time. I hope to give you more resources than myself so that you can help your player at home and your teams at practice and in games.

Each week I will try to keep everything short blog with a video to give you big picture as well as day to day drills. Please feel free to reach out and give me ideas of what I can include in future posts, my contact is [email protected]. Later in the year we plan to do a coaching clinic on the new multi-purpose field. I am waiting to set a date until after the field is completed, but we are thinking in February or March (field should be done in the next 30-60 days I’m guessing). 

Post 1: This is a link is to a podcast by the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA). The ABCA coaching membership goes from pros, to college, high school, and yes, even youth coaches. There are a lot of great resources available to members. 

Members and non-members can all listen to their podcast free. I wanted to start with this recent one from  both a travel and high school coach in Virginia. His teams included Michael Cuddyer, the Upton brothers, Mark Reynolds, and Ryan Zimmerman. Could you imagine those guys on the same team here? We can dream. He has great insight and advice for parents and youth coaches. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/abca-podcast/id1113053628?i=1000634608278

Drill of the Week: https://youtu.be/p6o47yFom5o?si=L3jOQrJR1en8PN3O  PVC Hitting Drill. This is from Blast Motion, a resource I’ll get to in later blogs. To adjust, put a wiffle ball on the tee and let them hit the ball, they will like it much better and it will give you and the player more instant feedback. Don’t worry about moving the tee around, just set it up in the middle of the player just in from of their front leg.

I like this drill for young hitters all the way up to the high schools guys. Take notice of the three “plains” (head, shoulders, and hips). Many young hitter will try to swing all three plains together at the same time. 

The hitters eyes stay locked on the ball, so that “plain” will actually appear to rotate backwards as the head rotated from front shoulder to the back shoulder through the swing. The first plain to rotate will be the hips. I encourage you to start players on this drill without a stride, just a load (rock back). Then the shoulders will rotate. If the hitter pulls their head they’ll miss the ball. If the hitter tries to just make contact that will barely hit it, and kids like to hit things. It will also force them to swing with their lower half, something many young players don’t do naturally. 

With young hitters, including my own kids (8, 11, and 13) and nephews, I tell them there are three rules to hitting. 1) Keep your eye on the ball 2)Swing as hard as you can and 3) No one cares if you miss. This will help them develop their swings. 

Please follow the high school team at @qtownhsbaseball on X