College Programs Influenced By the NPA

"..heavily influenced by the NPA..." may not be the exact description but pitching coach Karl Kuhn, in his 6th year at University of Virginia, should be one of the people on your list.

House thinks very highly of Kuhn and vice-versa.

You might also want to consider writing to Tom House and asking his opinion. At the last USC prospect camp my son went to (Dec '08) there were 12-14 other university coaches there as well, working with the prospects and sharing information. The USC staff does as much as it can to help athletes find the right spot, whether it's USC or somewhere else...

I think you are selling yourself short if you are only looking for “NPA influenced” coaches.

I think you are better off making a list of Universities that fit your son’s profile (academics, location, D1-3, etc, etc) and then further cull this list based on pitching approach. To start out looking for NPA focused will limit your choices. There are many fine pitching coaches’ non-NPA affiliated…probably more than NPA affiliated.

Frankly I think that Kreuter may be on thin ice at USC unless he gets the program headed in the right direction. They have done better recently but I would think that USC expects more from their program than what they have done in the past couple of years. Tom House or no Tom House.

Laflippin -- Thanks for the tip.

BOF -- Sound advice. We are trying to follow the council we have received on HSBW and elsewhere:

-- Find schools of all sizes that are a good fit academically, geographically, socially, and financialy; even if baseball were not part of the picture.

-- Narrow this down by schools (at all levels)where there could be a baseball oppotunity.

-- Then, if we have the option, narrow this down to the programs that embrace similar baseball philosophies and mechanics our son has embraced.

The first criteria is the easiest to deal with. The second one is yet to be determined. The third one might be harder to find, but is worth asking about as we build our lists.

I hope more members of our community can offer names of schools (and Coaches) large and small that have an NPA influence in their pitching approach.

southpaw_dad-


I would look real close at the video and listen very intently to what Kuhn says and demonstrates about the towel drill.

I have never ever seen a professional pitcher throw a baseball like Kuhn demonstrates. This kind of training is exactly what leads to a lot of confusion for the pitcher and increases the risk of injury to some higher level. Why...because Tom House said this is the way to do the towel drill!

Last time I looked at U of Virginia's record they were 29-7-1 and their first 19 games were all in the W column.

Karl Kuhn's pitching staff may not be all that confused...

The improvements in USC's program have been slower to come along than many would hope, but they had gone pretty far downhill before Kreuter, and then House, came along. Rebuilding a program to USC's level of expectations does take time.

quote:

Karl Kuhn's pitching staff may not be all that confused...

...........granted. But the SI(?) interview with Kuhn demonstrating the towel drill was atrocious.

Bringing us back to the orginal post & question ...

Can members of this community recommend college programs/coaches, who have been influenced by the NPA philosophies, mechanics and training?

We have identified USC (Trojans, not Gamecocks), and UVA. Two great schools for sure. Do we know of more? Many thanks.

Not 100% sure but I seem to recall seeing a video clip on the Internet of a Vanderbilt coach demonstrating the towel drill. Being NPA-certified myself, the instruction sounded very "House-ish" to me.

quote:

Originally posted by Roger Tomas:
Not 100% sure but I seem to recall seeing a video clip on the Internet of a Vanderbilt coach demonstrating the towel drill. Being NPA-certified myself, the instruction sounded very "House-ish" to me.

The Vanderbilt pitching coach (Derek Johnson) is definitely not a Tom House guy. At least not from what I've seen and the impression I've gotten from the conversations I've had with him. That doesn't mean he won't try some things with pitchers that House or others may advocate but in general I would say he's more of a Ron Wolforth/Brent Strom/S-E-T-P-R-O guy.

I just talked to the Pinkman Academy. They made the same comments about Kuhn and NPA, and Vanderbilt with Wolforth. FWIW, Vanderbilt has the edge.

cap_n,

Anybody as well-known as Tom House is going to have his share of detractors. That is an automatic. In fairness, his philosophy and his training methods are right out there in the open for anyone to dig into and take their shots at. No problem, I wish more pitching coaches were as open to honest criticism as Tom is. If you understand his approach well enough to know that you don't like it, that's fair enough, too. There is room in the world for more than one reasonable point of view, and reasonable people can disagree with one another.

Still, to continue in the vein of fairness, House has been involved so deeply in the analysis of pitching, protocols for training and conditioning pitchers, and so on, for so long--many people, even many of his detractors, use stuff he has developed either with or without being consciously aware of it. (For example, I watched a bullpen at Stanford not long ago where some pitchers were going through a series of towel drills...when I asked some of them about it later, they had no idea where the drills came from).

There are all sorts of personalities in baseball--the ones I personally like best are guys who appreciate and honor the positive impact their previous coaches have made on their careers and who really understand deeply why they favor one approach or another. Beyond that, there is plenty of room for friendly disagreement about style and personality.

By the way, another answer to the OP's question is: Tom Wishmeyer at Vanguard University. VU is a small NAIA college, but they also play non-conference games against some of the best competition.

I think the point of this thread is that southpaw_son has been working with House-trained coaches and using House-approved mechanics for awhile - as has mine -- and has been very successful with it. Southpaw_dad wants him to go to a school where the pitching coach understands exactly what he's doing with his glove when he's finishing the pitch, among other things. Good luck with your research, and I hope you share your findings. My son is going to USC for their camp in July and my husband hopes to have a few minutes to talk to House about this same topic.

My son goes to a school that follows the House teachings. A 2008 grad ended up at a big DI program where pitching coach tried to remake him... he fought it for a year but is now at a JC. A good JC for baseball... but still.

LHPMom

This situation should be part of a discussion when talking to college coaches who have an interest in your son and it should happen before the decision is made to attend

You might also want to attend a few games to see how they approach the pitching aspect

laflippin-

Well stated, thanks!

It's great that there are more avenues to find correct answers to today than there was ten years ago. The "end-all" philosophy has changed, and apparently changed for the better.

............but I still don't care for Kuhn's interpretation of the towel drill.

Sorry southpaw_dad. I haven't heard of any other institutions around here.

Good stuff & thank you. This would seem to be a simple question, but it has been a real challenge getting answers.

TR -- I could not agree with you more that kids today don't throw enough. In fact, that is an admonition Coach House gives to all players, parents & coaches at his clinics ... kids today pitch too much, and don't throw enough; and their arms are paying the price.

Cap_n -- Thanks for the research. I'm with Laflippin (and you) that there is more than 1 right way to do things; and we can learn from all. My son loves Coach Kuhn and the towel drills ... but he has learned them in the context of the entirety of his pitching mechanics. Towels are a reuglar part of his bullpen routine, and contribute greatly to the repeatability of his mechanics, and his excellent command. However, out of context, I originally had some doubts as well.

LHPMom -- Let's stay in touch and share what we learn. Sorry I missed you when the boy's teams squared off. I was working concessions

Well ... the original question remains ... Thanks all for your input, and I hope other members of our community can add to the list.

Actually we didn't make it that day either. Kid pitched the day before, woke up in the middle of the night throwing up... good thing they didn't need him to pitch; he probably would have tried to do it anyway.

Getting really sick of rain, no fields, no umps and missing games... hope things are better on your side of the Beltway.

I agree with BOF, the philososphy of the pitching coach should be your last concern.
There are many fine college pitching coaches out there that have developed their own methods using a little from this one and a little from that one, etc. If your son comes with good mechanics and a good work ethic and gets the job done, no one will make major changes, just tweaks. Just keep in mind that it's constant tweaking.

I think TPM has this one right. There was a pitching site that relied on college pitching coaches for input. I think it died but before it did they had a section where they asked several different pitching coaches the same questions. One of those questions was "What mistakes do new pitching coaches make?" The answer was the same from all the pitching coaches. New coaches make the mistake of trying to change mechanics instead of just tweaking. I think very few college pitching coaches will do more than try to refine and maintain mechanics unless a change is really needed.

I agree generally with TPM and CADad but might expand on the exceptions somewhat.

I tend to feel that most good D1 programs are more likely to have motivated, experienced pitching coaches who will not make too many bush-league mistakes in the training programs for their pitchers.

Perhaps the same can be said for D2-level schools, I'm not quite as sure.

However, I've seen some real variability among California JUCO programs--even ones that have a strong track record of overall success. The problem for these programs is: Assistant Coaches are paid very, very little for their time at JUCO level and most of them have second jobs to pay the rent. Given that the programs cannot pay for the best available coaching talent, they must do their best with whomever is available. Sometimes that works out very well, and sometimes not so well.

Not trying to hijack this thread, but you really don't know what the coaches are going to do. Our experience was from three different sources.

1) American Legion coach who wrote his thesis on pitching mechanics....

quote:

your change-up is almost as fast as your fast ball.....slow down your change up

2) College coach, tight with D. Strawberry, father at one time on the MLB mound, moved to MLB bull pen coach position......

quote:

slow your curve down!

3) Summer collegian coach.....

quote:

it's your opportunity....do what you do best

....best outings ever....90-91!



4) New college coach.....

quote:

If you don't throw my way, you'll be sitting!

.....then SNAP!#! then off to see the man at Lennox Hosp.

Three with tons of credentials, none offered to correctly fix the fast ball mechanics.

One recognized what he had....good or bad....but had the sense to let it alone.

Wow, cap_n...that is a very sobering story. I sure hope things turned out okay for your boy after the surgery.

quote:

.......fricken better than it ever was!

Thank goodness for that.

Did he have a TJ procedure? There is some evidence that a fairly high percentage of pitchers recover from TJ to the same, or slightly better, level than they had been before the surgery. House said he thinks that the procedure itself gets most guys back to about their "normal", but the TJ rehab program may be a better conditioning regimen than many standard pitcher fitness routines...so that may add something. (Note: This is not an argument for performing medically unnecessary TJ surgery! However, the rehab conditioning program might be more generally applicable than just for TJ-recovery).

quote:

. (Note: This is not an argument for performing medically unnecessary TJ surgery! However, the rehab conditioning program might be more generally applicable than just for TJ-recovery).

Not even the best of exams/testing illustrated complete separation of the ligament; they couldn't tell until they opened the elbow. The key to recovery was daily workouts with free weights leading up to 40, 50, 60# dumbbells. The underlying scar tissue is undetectable to the touch now.....unlike my bi-lateral hernia repairs.

Not sure what type of player your son is or what type of college he could land at but Azusa Pacific University has a Tom House guy as their pitching coach.

Not sure why you would even bother to have this part of your criteria when looking at schools.

College coaches move around quite a bit. Especially the assistants (i.e pitching coaches), so to narrow down your choices with NPA as a requirement does not seem very logical to me.

My .02

Good post RobV.
The first criteria is where you want to get your education after HS, baseball is just a means to get there. Coaches come and go, often.

Ok so here is one for you, what happens if your son is drafted, are you going to question the organization on their pitching philosophies?

Concentrate of becoming an effective pitcher, that should be the only goal, no matter whose philosophy your son has been taught. You have to be open to everything that's out there.

southpaw,

I completely understand where you're coming from. I think many pitchers with significant experience from working with Tom House and/or coaches trained by House would prefer to remain associated with him and his methods.

But TPM makes a number of excellent points, all of which are in agreement with House's own philosophy.

First priority is the education your son will get, not the baseball program.

Second, there are many outstanding pitching coaches who are not associated with House or the NPA. Jargon may differ, and specific drills and approaches to certain issues may differ; however, you can absolutely find great pitching coaches who have independently developed their individual approaches to pitcher training along very similar lines to the NPA protocols. There is a lot of cross-fertilization in baseball. The smart guys learn from everybody, keep what works, discard what doesn't work, and they evolve and adapt as they go. I think Tom House does a terrific job of this--certainly the best I've seen, in my opinion. But even from my limited experience, I've seen other coaches whom I respect deeply and whose approach to teaching pitching meets all of my litmus tests.

Finally, one of Tom's central tenets is, "Every pitcher should eventually strive to become his own best pitching coach". That obviously doesn't mean that pitchers develop to the point where they don't need coaching from others--it means that they should develop a strong sense of self-confidence in their own abilities and self-knowledge, both strengths and weaknesses.

I don't think most pitching coaches at higher levels of baseball spend a lot of time fixing what isn't broken. If your son has a solid mechanical foundation, has learned conditioning routines that work, and simply needs to keep developing his strengths...I'm guessing that most coaches would be extremely happy with that. I'm sure some coaches are the 'wrong fit' for certain pitchers, and 'horror stories' are always easier to remember than the completely satisfactory outcomes, however, I'd guess that you can usually sort out the ones who clearly would be a 'wrong fit' before making a commitment--that's what diligence visits are for.

Thanks All,

Thanks for adding Azusa Pacific to the list.

As for those of you who question my question, let me be clear ...

-- We know that education is #1, and the 1st priority is finding schools that fit him academically, geographically, socially, and financially.

-- From this pool, if we find schools that offer him a baseball opportunity, that would be great.

-- From this pool, if we could find a school that has a PC who adheres to NPA-like philosophies, and training, then that would make the trifecta.

Why ask? If you had a kid who has enjoyed a lot of success playing against competition as much as 4 years his senior, with no arm soreness or problems in over 4 years; would you be interested in keeping him involved in programs that followed similar training? And yes, I know Coaches move, so that is why I asked about Coaches.

What happens if he gets drafted you ask, and the organization paying him wants him to change what he does? Wouldn't that be a wonderful problem to have?

As a parent, I just want him to enjoy playing the game as long as he can (and wants to); and to be healthy when his time in the game is over. I have a lot of experience that tells me that the NPA method of pitching gives him the best chance of doing both of these things.

Keep those cards and letters coming with other schools with an NPA influence. Thanks all for some great food for thought.

You said it all....and you said it perfectly. There is no chance of failure when your head is screwed on so nicely. Good luck on an a great journey.

I understand your point, but not too sure where the true seperation comes in with pitching coaches and their philosophies.
None of the coaches that son played with while growing up were involved with the NPA, (that didn't exist back then?) However, many of them did have philosophies similar. To me, the NPA is just a philosophy that should be adopted by all, training, throwing frequently, pitch count watch, reguired rest, etc.
No pitcher, regardless of who he is will ever escape an injury. Mine also was healthy all through his early years, I attribute that to being smart and not overuse at a yong age. However, recently had a setback but nothing major. Labrum fraying, happens to all pitchers, and not necessarily an issue, but bothered him.
I made my comment about pro ball because there are many different philosophies for pitcher use, some pitch every 5,6 days, some every 3 or 4. Lower pitch counts, higher pitch counts. You'll find that in college also. But I agree the object is to make it to college or beyond healthy.

What we did, was inquire as to pitcher use, that was important. My son's pitching coach was not a huge fan of complete games and you get pulled regardless of a no hitter or not, etc. Depending on where your pitch count was and if you showed signs of fatigue. That means the pc has to be pretty in tuned to each individual. I am not a big fan of just pitching every 7 days in college. I also liked a staff that has enough pitchers to get through the season and uses them and you will not find that everywhere.

You will find that most good pitching coaches know their stuff, the more successful the program the better he is knowledgable, though there are many programs that each and every year in the running, but do not manage their pitching staff well. Take note of pitcher use including pitch counts in games and team ERA, etc. if that is important to you.

That is the first thing that should be considered, regardless of philosophy.

Good luck.

TPM -- Great stuff. Thank you.

In line with your comments ... Last summer SP_son attended a college prospect camp where the boys were addressed by a 3 or 4 collegiate PC's. One coach was known to have an NPA mindset towards pitch counts, drills, training, mechanics, etc. SP-son ate it up, and the school would be one of the best possible choices for him across the board. Another spoke with great pride about how his starting pitchers throw 85 pitches, full force, from the mound as PART (only part) of their pre-game routine. He spoke about how they bring guys in and change their arm slots to make them an over the top, or sidearm guy, depending on where they are when they come in ... and a variety of other things that made SP_son say he knew one school he could take off his list. FYI - It would not be a good fit geographically, socially, or financially either.

To me, part of what makes a Coach NPA-like, is his approach towards mechanics. The 4" scar on my left shoulder tells me that Coach House and the NPA mindset of developing mechanics around each Pitcher's unique genetic signature is the right way to go. My arm was constantly sore from age 15 forward ... due to overuse I now know. But it was when a HS Coach tried to change my 1/2 to 3/4 delivery to an over-the-top delivery in my Sr. year that my arm was ruined. Within 2 month, I went from throwing no-hit and shut-out baseball to not being able to throw the ball 60'. My baseball days were over.

After 15 years of Rugby I finally had my shoulder overhauled. My Doc (one of the best in the country), knew my shoulder problems had begun as a Pitcher in my teens. After the surgery, and having seen the consturction of my shoulder, he was able to accuratley tell me how I had thrown the ball naturally; was able to guess what changes Coaches had made to my delivery; and was able to describe to me how those changes had torn up the tendon running down my arm, and started me on the road to arthritis (which the Rugby exacerbated ).

I'm in line with all you said about the use of Pitchers. I agree that is very important. I am also very keen on the idea that there are certain principles of pitching mechanics, that when taught around a Pitcher's natural genetic signature, and supported through training, will give the player the greatest opportunity to succeed, and stay healthy. This, we found in the NPA, and is what I mean by finding Coaches who are NPA-like.

Thanks for your good thoughts. I appreciate learning from your experience, and the experiences of others.

I am going to go on from what I know from my experience, that most good college coaches don't make major changes with genetic disposition. You definetly want to stay away from that, and I am not sure why coaches try to do overhauls. That would be a given regardless of NPA philosophy or not.
My son's pitching coach in college DID make some changes in slot, finding the right slot (not dramatic) a bit lower to higher that would serve for all pitches thrown. In doing so, he increased his velo 4-6mph and the increase was gradual. As that progressed so did his success but with that also game some tough games. Mr. TPM questioned that, but since we knew that this coach (Kevin O'Sullivan) knew more than he did, that was acceptable. Sometimes changes are needed to move forward. Now son is going through another change, keep working at higher velo and maintain control and command. So in reality, pitchers are constantly being tweeked and always a work in progress.

I very rarely saw (12 o'clock) or side arm pitchers in college, occasionally a submarine guy for relief. But on average it was usually 3/4 guys, some just a tade higher, some just a tad lower. You will see some, in pro ball but not often. I am not sure why, some of these guys have success, but their stuff is limited (for the side armers). Years ago in proball they changed pitchers to fit the mold, now you don't hear about that as much, so in reality I think many have embraced those that come with completely different stuff than most.

Anyway, I know understand your point and this certainly is a very good discussion to have during the recruiting process. I thought you were looking strictly for NPA coaches, NPA like is good. Also as I said, when interested in a program, watch the innings thrown and NP's in a game, that can make a whole lot of difference for some. Of course, some just come with a built in rubber arm, but most don't.

A lot of good information, but a good question to ask the pitching coach on your recruiting visits, ask them about mechanics, weight program, running program, there philosophies of pitching. Ask if they make everyone throw the same way, ask them when they make major changes vs minor ones. Than take all the information right at down and compare to other schools and make the best choice for your son. He should be able to answer yes to the following three questions.

1. Are the academics what I am looking for?

2. Do I see my self fitting in with the current players?

3. Do I see my self giving everything I have to this coaching staff and players to make us the best?

If he answers no to any of those questions, cross that school off!

Hope it helps