St. Joe’s has one of the most successful high school baseball programs in Western New York, winning the Monsignor Martin Athletic Association 33 times and the Georgetown Cup playoffs 14 times, dating back to 1927.
Certainly, the Marauders have had plenty of talent over the years – but they’ve also had the coaches who knew how to get the most from those players.
Coach Paul Nasca ’86 is the man currently at the helm of the squad. Since starting in 2011, he has guided St. Joe’s to six league championships and five cup playoff titles.
One of the reasons for his success has been his willingness to find new ways to guide his players – and this offseason has been no different.
“The St. Joe's baseball team has added more technology to the teaching of their players,” said Nasca, who himself was part of Marauder league championship teams in 1984, 85 and 86. “Over the years, the staff and I staff have used video to show players their mechanics – but with increasing technology out there, the program has stepped into a new way of teaching.”
The team has been using virtual reality goggles, among other tools, the help train the hitters to experience different kinds of speed and looks from pitchers.
In addition to these products, the program added student analysts to track and record all the measurable data from tools like Blast Motion.
Known as Blast Baseball, the program is a swing analyzer with professional-grade accuracy.
A player simply attaches a sensor to the knob of any bat and starts swinging. Information is then automatically captured and sent to a smart phone or tablet in the form of simple metrics.
“Hitters can put the goggles on and program any of the over 100 pitchers in the platform to simulate game action as if the hitter were facing that exact pitcher,” Nasca said. “This doesn't replace what the staff does in their teaching but supplements it. They have also used a different set of goggles to help grow a hitter's focus with blinking light transmissions that make the hitters enhance their focus on the ball traveling toward them.”
Nasca says that grabbing this data can help him teach his hitters about their trends and correct flaws in mechanics and add drills to increase their output.
“All of these things are newer to the teaching space, but if the data can be used to better train the players, then I’ll use it,” he said. “Admittedly, the high school baseball season is not a huge sample size but if there’s data to collect, I’ll collect it and see if it can help in the teaching process.”