About the Vortex Softball
Vortex conducts Vortex Softball College Coaches Softball Clinics for High School Players throughout the United States. We have grown since 1994 from running “showcases” in the Boston, MA area to conducting clincis for players from all over the country.
Because of our reputation for quality, honesty and integrity integrity, Louisville Slugger approached us in 2003 about forming a partnership with a long range goal of expanding our events outside of Massachusetts. As a result of this partnership, the Vortex Softball brand name was developed for all of our events.
The original showcase quickly grew from 96 players in 1994 to 150 players with more than 700 applications per year. Over the years, we noticed the athleticism of our players was improving, but that their fundamental skills were declining. At the same time, we noticed that the “showcase industry” was slowly developing a “bad reputation”
- Promising attendance by colleges that don’t show up
- Not providing any value to the players other than a few ground balls or fly balls and a few swings
- Taking too many players, requiring events to be held in multiple locations, making it even more difficult for the few coaches who showed up to see all the players.
As a result of these trends, we decided to get out of the “showcase” business, completely changing our method of operating and the format of our events. The Vortex Softball College Coaches Softball Clinics for High School Players, provides substantial value to it’s participants at a cost less than players would pay to attend a “Showcase” with all of its attendant problems. The Vortex Softball has taken steps to eliminate the problems encountered in many “Showcases”.
- We guarantee that the colleges we list, on our website, as attending will in fact attend. We can guarantee their attendance because we hire them to work at our clinics to provide instruction and evaluations to the players
- We provide substantial value to our participants. Our college coaches provide the following:
- Hands-on instruction in 11 different areas, ,
- written and 1-on-1 personal evaluations
- specialized instruction in strength and conditioning, bunting/base running etc.
- Our goal is to teach these high school players the softball fundamentals they need to take their game to the next level.
- We limit the total number of players at each of our clinics and we also limit the number of players at each position. We strive for a player to coach ratio of less than 7:1 ensuring that players get hands-on attention from our coaching staff.
We ran our first set of clinics in 2005 expanding to 8 locations and serving over 600 players. In 2006 we expanded to 22 clinics with approximately 2200 players attending and we hired nearly 400 coaches from 300 colleges. In 2007, we will be conducting 40 clinics and hiring 800 college coaches as instructors.