I have a pitcher/infielder who is talking to several colleges. Several people have suggested getting an Athletic Assessment done on him to give to the coaches as an edge. Has anyone done it and is it worth it? I have heard it is the new thing that coaches are looking for that will show character and behavior. Any ideas?
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Never heard of it and neither have most coaches. The only assessment they care about is Velo and Tools for position players.
Haven't heard of it either. What exactly do you assess? How does it show character and behavior? When I hear "athletic assessment" I automatically think physical skills and abilities not character or behavior.
The only athletic assessment I've heard of is SPARQ. It has nothing to do with behavior. SPARQ was a bit of a fad for a while. I haven't heard it mentioned lately in relation to baseball.
Not to be completely cynical, but it sounds like someone is looking to take your hard earned money...
I have a pitcher/infielder who is talking to several colleges. Several people have suggested getting an Athletic Assessment done on him to give to the coaches as an edge. Has anyone done it and is it worth it? I have heard it is the new thing that coaches are looking for that will show character and behavior. Any ideas?
You may want to get a clarification from those folks. I've heard of recruits in our area getting SPARQ training or going to Pro Scouting combines to get specific athletic metrics such as the 60 yard dash, pitching velocity,bat speed, pop-time, velocity from the outfield, etc,,,,
Measuring character and behavior is going to be a lot tougher.
As a side note, this type of physical assessment (above) may help you more than the coaches. By knowing the level of baseball player (or tools he possesses) your son is or isn't, you can save a lot of time and money by knowing where he is most likely to be recruited. Let's call it baseball profiling.
Good luck!
Let me begin by saying I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. I do work for a company named Synergistic Resources that offers Athletic Assessments to high school, college, and professional teams. DISC behavioral analysis has been in the corporate world for years. It is a test that takes about 15 minutes to take that assesses your responses and behavior in real life. It has been used by Corporate America for years to help workers understand how they behave and react to each other and management and vice versa. It has been re-written to apply to sports Managers, Coaches, and Players. It has been used widely around the world, especially in the Olympic realm. It is just now being used in the United States. It prepares you a 44 page report that details how you respond in certain situations and respond daily with certain other types of people. It is a great tool for behavioral analysis and has become very lauded in the college and professional sports realm by those who have used it. We have found that with the problems of behavior in athletics that AD's/Presidents of Colleges and General Managers of Professional teams are looking for some tool to help head off this trend. Athletic Assessment is a great tool for doing that because it helps you understand how a player will respond and there is an adjustment tool that provides ways to help change behavior in the consultation process. You can not change your personality but you can change your behavior. We have begun to use it in our recruiting side and it has had great appeal to coaches. It helps them understand a player's behavior and the tasks they are doing to help fix their bad traits. Coaches are impressed with this attachment and the fact that the recruits are realizing how their behavior affects themselves and others. No it is not better than a 95 mph fast ball. It is another recruiting tool.
As a parent that has gone through the recruiting process twice and still has another to go, it is just a tool and any edge a player can get in the process with a coach is a step up. I have seen it work and help players. I know DISC works in the corporate world and Athletic Assessment is a great tool for teams and coaching staffs.
I will not debate it further on here but would be glad to speak to anyone in PM or you can call me at 423-791-4303. It is just a tool like all the other things I used to help get my sons recruited including showcases, emails, videos, and others. I believe in the next few years almost all college and professional teams will be using Athletic Assessments to help their teams interact with each other and attempt to deter bad behavior.
Check out this article it was not written by us
https://www.discinsights.com/b...s-a-recruitment-tool
Thanks for sharing Jeff. As the old saying goes....you learn something new everyday.
Kinda reminds me of a useless test I took for a state job. Lots of seemingly useless Q that only a fool would answer honestly or answer project a certain desired perception : ex. "Do you ever wake up feeling evil in the morning", What!!!! Tests of that sort are only as good as the honesty of the answers and the criteria of the weeding out parameters.
During a portion of the summer following his freshman year in college, my son served as an instructor-intern in Tom House's camps/clinics in San Diego. During his time there, he took an indexing profile that sounds quite similar to the DISC tool. Sorry that I can't recall the precise name of the test.
He found the insights in the results quite helpful. In addition to helping him better understand the relative strengths of what he brought to the competitive "table," its ratings compared to the universe of athletes who had taken it before him gave him a better appreciation of how he measured up relative to his peers along various dimensions.
