Pittsburgh Spikes

WELCOME TO THE PITTSBURGH SPIKES.

Travel ball has become a buzzword-filled industry with plenty of promises of data, tech, player development, and exposure, but what really matters is playing the game and connecting the dots between all these elements. Educated coaches with a growth mindset are essential to your child's future in baseball. Player development is not about over-coaching mechanics or providing eyewash instruction that may actually harm your son's future prospects. It's about respecting the game and helping young players grow and learn while avoiding long-term damage to their skills and health.

The Pittsburgh Spikes, led by President Chase Rowe (B.S. Sport Coaching), invite you to join our baseball family. We recognize that the youth baseball culture can be obsessed with winning at all costs, with many so-called "elite programs" competing for kids and parents' money without providing positive learning experiences or helping with long-term skill development and health. Our coaching staff includes experienced educators with bachelor's degrees in Sport Coaching, as well as certifications in player development tools and technologies such as 4D Motion, Kvest, TPI, OnbaseU, Rapsodo Hitting/Pitching, Bertec, and Driveline Youth Certifications. We also have a strong focus on helping parents mold their sons into young men.

Our common sense approach not only saves you money, but also helps prepare your son for college baseball and beyond. Our near 100% college placement rate speaks to our success in achieving this goal. Our mission is clear: we care about the END game, where your son's game is at when his high school career is ending. We don't care about plastic trophies or playing 100 games a year. We care about ensuring that your son is ready to play the game at the highest level his abilities allow, and that he has the long-term development and exposure to achieve his goals.

Boasting about plastic trophies and playing 100 games a year does not make you elite. In fact, coaches in the college and professional ranks will tell you that the requirements to be a good little leaguer are not even close to the same requirements to make you a good player in high school and beyond. More practice is useless if it creates career-ending bad habits. The gap between college/pro level instruction and travel ball instruction is significant enough to waste years of your investments into baseball and potentially end your son's career short of his goals.

At the Pittsburgh Spikes, our philosophy is all about long-term player development and exposure, which go hand in hand. The best players need to be prepared at a young age for the requirements the game presents at the highest levels of play. Our staff has the best practice structure, application of data/technology, and coach to player ratio in the region to help achieve this goal.