Success in high school baseball depends on many factors. Talent matters, of course, but even the best talent can languish without excellent coaching, solid practice habits and skill development, and the right equipment.
Let’s talk more about the equipment. Even casual fans are familiar with the basics—bats, balls, gloves, helmets, and so on. But some of the most important equipment is designed to keep the field pristine for games and practice, and that’s where high school pitching platforms for batting practice come into play.
They’re amazingly convenient, and the bonus is that many of the best ones are designed for younger athletes. High school is a differentiator when it comes to developmental skills, so let’s take a deeper dive into the world of high school pitching platforms for batting practice.
How to Build a Pitching Mound?
Let’s start with a simple exercise. Say you’re a member of a high school team, or maybe you’re coaching one. You know your team needs a pitching mound to practice effectively, so you decide to build one in an auxiliary location for those times when practice fields are unavailable.
You start by selecting a location, and you quickly discover that the entire project is going to be harder than you thought. The location has to be flat and level, and large enough to accommodate both the mound and home plate, and after scouting some locations you hone in on your target location.
Once you do you start to level the site—no site is perfect, after all, and there are probably some bumps and indentations you didn’t notice when you were scouting.
After that, you excavate the turf, usually by hand, and then you build the mound. You quickly discover that much of this is a laborious exercise in blood, sweat, and tears, but finally, you’re able to install the pitching rubber, although perhaps not as precisely as you first thought.
Then you measure the distance from the rubber to home plate, but on the way, you maybe discover a few more bumps and indentations you need to handle—once again, no site is perfect.
Then you install home plate, and as you finish up you probably end up thinking that there has to be a better way.
The Equipment Addition: Enter the High School Pitching Platform with Wheels
Fortunately, there is. The purpose of doing the exercise we went through in the last section is that it’s a solid illustration of why pitching platforms were invented in the first place.
They may have been crude when they were first developed, but they’re not now. High school pitching platforms have become precision equipment—they’re carefully designed, made in part from high-tech materials and they’re built to last, too.
They only cost a few hundred dollars, which may seem like a lot until you realize the time savings that come with them. All you have to do is call a couple of assistant coaches, arrange for a vehicle big enough to carry them, carry or wheel them out, and you’re good to go.
Even better, you get to skip a lot of steps that went into building that mound. The measurements are taken care of for you, and the angle of the mound is perfect, too.
Moreover, you can use them for both softball and baseball, which is the ultimate win-win for those who are passionate about coaching and playing the game as much as possible.
The Equipment Benefits
Convenience isn’t the only benefit you get with a pitching platform, though.
If you coach or play high school baseball, you know that field space is at a premium, and if these fields are used constantly, the wear and tear on the mount can quickly affect the quality of both your practice and game performance.
On top of that, the towns and schools that own and run these fields aren’t exactly thrilled about that wear and tear, either.
Many of them make coaches and teams responsible for eliminating that kind of wear and tear, which is why pitching platforms have become so popular at schools, municipal fields, and in park spaces.
The simplicity of the “installation” process is another major benefit. With a high-quality pitching platform, virtually any open space can become at least a temporary field, with measurements that are authentic and verifiable.
You can hold practices on the run, conduct special workouts for your pitchers to work on their form, and do drills that wouldn’t be possible without one of these platforms.
Batting Practice Benefits
Now let’s talk about batting practice.
Many high school batting practice sessions lean toward scattershot exercises, with players battling for plate time and getting just a few precious swings.
High school pitching platforms for batting practice change the drill, both literally and figuratively. They allow you to set up quickly, set up batting practice groups, and tighten up the hitting sequence.
That means hitters get to work on specific drills. You can set up an exercise where everyone works on hitting to the opposite field, for instance, followed by another drill where the goal is to improve power.
Specialized drills are no longer a chore and players pay more attention and perform better because everyone’s involved.
Not only that, but players love it. They know they’re developing their skills using the best possible equipment, and that helps create the kind of chemistry and camaraderie that’s essential for winning performance.
Coaches get to chart the progress that’s being made, too. It’s amazing to think that a simple device like a pitching platform can have such a profound impact on a team, but at Victory Mounds, we’ve seen it happen more times than we can count.
The Victory Mounds Difference
We’ve been designing high-quality portable pitching mounds for colleges for years, so we know all about the benefits.
Our products include batting practice mounds, portable pitching mounds, and a full array of field equipment and products, and we also provide consulting services for field maintenance, starting an indoor hitting facility, or promoting your facility business.
Contact Us Today!
To up your game with us, call us at 800-835-9460, or email us at info@victorymounds.com.
You can see our products at victorymounds.com, and we’ve got some great blogs to help you understand what they can do for you and your program.