How Technology, Data, and Biomechanics are Reshaping Softball Training

Athletic Intelligence Episode 2 Transcript

Rethinking How we Train Youth Softball Players with Krista Stoker

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[00:00] Krista Stoker: Even 14 year olds, when they're given that feedback, both the video and then the data and that constant loop and interaction with the data, they can actually make a lot of change. They become their own coach, and that's really powerful. 

[00:14] Narration: That's Krista Stoker, one of the co-founders of OGX softball, a company that helps

[00:19] Narration: softball players understand how their bodies move using data, biomechanics, and real time feedback. OGX works with athletes and organizations to build training systems that are more individualized, more informed, and more sustainable. 

[00:33] Krista Stoker: A lot of times when athletes come to us with their first biomechanics assessment, they feel like they've been throwing darts at a wall, like they have no idea, am I moving in the right direction?

[00:43] Krista Stoker: Am I right about what makes me good? Am I right that I could play at this level or, or couldn't play at this level? We have a good sense with the information we have in front of us with where you are and what makes you successful, what's holding you back from being successful, 

[00:56] Krista Stoker: and they feel really empowered in that.

[00:57] Narration: In this episode, Aman Loomba, GameChanger's SVP of Product, is joined by senior marketing manager Anna Nichol, who brings a rich background both on the field as a softball player and in the dugout as a youth and collegiate coach. Together they sit down with Krista and discuss how data is reshaping development. What it takes to keep softball players healthy and why

[01:18] Narration: understanding the body is one of the most powerful tools an athlete can have.

[01:27] Narration: This is Athletic Intelligence from GameChanger. A show where we go deep inside the world of baseball and softball, uncovering the tech that's shaping the game.

The Impact of Coaching, Opportunity, and Sacrifice

[01:40] Narration: Krista's connection to the game and what it means to be a good coach were shaped by her early experiences on the field and the people who made space for her to grow. 

[01:49] Krista Stoker: So I actually had the opportunity growing up to be coached by my brother. He started coaching when I was 14, um, because our father passed away when we were younger.

[02:00] Krista Stoker: And so he was very much like a father figure to me. And when I was 14 in our town, softball wasn't a very big thing. There wasn't a lot of opportunities to play at a very competitive level. And so my brother and someone else, a, a father in the community decided to give us that opportunity and formed a travel team so that we could compete at a higher level than what was given to us.

[02:23] Krista Stoker: Um, then, so I think he obviously made a really big impact for me in my journey because it was about sacrifice and giving back and sort of opening opportunities for us, and I think. That, to me, is what a coach is, which is really helping provide opportunities in a variety of different ways, whether it's literally the opportunity to be on the team, which was kind of mine, or an opportunity to be the best version of yourself, an opportunity to continue to grow.

[02:51] Krista Stoker: And so to me, he kind of really embodied what I think of as great coaching. I played division three at a high academic school, Wash U — Washington University in St. Louis, and had the opportunity to go to the World Series my junior year and actually competed against my business partner who went to Emory.

From Division III Softball to Sports Science Leadership

[03:13] Narration: While Krista and her eventual business partner Ashley played in college, they didn't follow a traditional high profile playing path into coaching. They were both focused on their studies and didn't necessarily have the physical profiles to be elite level players. 

[03:29] Krista Stoker: That background for both of us is really important to the journey of where we are now as humans and coaches.

[03:35] Krista Stoker: We had something that maybe held us back from playing at that level, and we had to work really hard to be kind of maximize ourselves at the time. We knew at the time how sort of hard it was for us to both stay healthy, to contribute at a high level, and that was with very minimal resources. I think my senior year of college, Right View Pro came out, which is literally the first time people saw like video

[03:59] Krista Stoker: of themselves swinging. So I think my senior year of college, someone showed a side-by-side of me next to like Jenny Finch swinging, which was so amazing at the time to see this like grainy, blurry video. But that was the first time we were able to do that. So I think myself as a player was just someone who I really loved the game.

[04:20] Krista Stoker: I loved what it brought me in terms of teammates and friends and competition, and I, I couldn't get away from it. 

[04:31] Narration: While she completed her law degree, Krista coached the undergrad softball team alongside Ashley Sunshine, and the idea for OGX started to materialize. Initially a passion project in 2011. The business fully took off in 2014.

The Origins of OGX and the Drive to Do Things Differently

[04:49] Krista Stoker: At that time, we really just started. Somewhat of a traditional training facility. I think there was some unique aspects to it. Our backgrounds were unique. Maybe the areas we focused on were unique. We always included strength and conditioning as part of training, and that was unique at the time. But really when you looked at it, it was a training facility, um, run by two softball players.

[05:10] Krista Stoker: And in 2018, we kind of hit this crossroads of a couple things. One is, we didn't really feel like we were impacting our athletes. Like it just felt a little bit like we were saying things were working, we were telling athletes to trust the process, but then we were going out and watching them on the field and just not seeing the full translation of what we were trying to accomplish.

[05:29] Krista Stoker: And at the same time that we were feeling that internally tech and data were really coming into the space in baseball, and so we were seeing, in baseball, the opportunities that the players were having to really maximize themselves using that information. And so this was the time, you know, I always kind of differentiate between, there's like Moneyball that we might all hear about, which is maximizing just data analytics.

What Baseball’s Data Boom Taught Softball

[05:53] Krista Stoker: So taking that information that you have about a player and maximizing it. And that's a piece of what we, we do and feel passionate about for sure. But then there is taking that information, and maximizing players, taking it into player development, which is really how baseball started evolving at that time.

[06:09] Krista Stoker: And we wanted to be able to offer that into the space as well. So we invested in a bunch of tech. We invested in data. We ultimately hired a sports scientist full-time, and we just went all into really trying to get a better picture of what actually is good in softball. You know, at that point we had a lot of coaches on the space who were just like.

From High-Speed Video to Full Biomechanical Analysis

[06:28] Krista Stoker: ‘We think you should do this’. You know, we all said a bunch of things based on some Right View Pro, grainy video that we had at that point. And as we got access to even like the first thing we had was just a high speed camera before we even got more, more data than that. And to be able to see the video that clear, all of a sudden some of the things that we had been seen as coaches

[06:48] Krista Stoker: we're like, oh, that's not exactly what's happening in this video. You know, we're telling the athletes to do this and that's not exactly what we're seeing here. So we just spent a lot of time collecting information to really get a sense of what are we trying to get our athletes to do? And then we took that information as we started to get a sense of that and started putting it in training programs and just testing and iterating and iterating of what worked to get to a place where training feels more efficient, where we've sort of tested it against that data.

[07:16] Krista Stoker: If it's not working, we can pivot kind of fast, and we know that we're going in a direction with our athletes to help them maximize in a way that scales at the next level, which is really important to us. 

[07:26] Aman Loomba: What would the average customer of yours come in and say? I, well, they already know ‘I want to improve my velocity as a pitcher.’

[07:34] Aman Loomba: ‘I wanna improve my bat speed as a hitter.’ If they know that or if you determine that, it's very easy to tell whether they've gotten better because you can measure those things. 

[07:40] Krista Stoker:Right. 

[07:40] Aman Loomba: But is it ever, is it always that simple or are there other sort of more like abstract and complex things people wanna get to outta this training?

[07:49] Krista Stoker: Sure. I think that, you know, the further up the game you get, the more complicated it gets for sure. So, you know, we consult right now at programs are in the top five in the country. And so obviously the work that we're doing with their staffs or their teams is much more nuanced. You know, their pitchers lose

[08:04] Krista Stoker: two inches of break in a game and all of a sudden they're getting hammered. And so we're helping with workload, we're helping with a lot of different, more nuanced things. Oftentimes what I would say is that for high school and junior high athletes, it really is that simple. It really is often that simple and what, what makes it more complicated and what runs against that is just

[08:24] Krista Stoker: they're often being told that it's not that simple. They're often being told that they need to do all these things and just keep doing more and more and more things. Or they should be training like that top five pitcher. They should be focused on these little nuances, and a lot of times it really just

[08:40] Krista Stoker: isn't that complicated. And what makes it complicated, like I said, is that they just are fighting the system a little bit to try to keep it easy. 'Cause, you know, what's not easy is that it takes time for a pitcher to continue to develop. So she has to stay in the game, she has to stay healthy, she has to kind of stay the course.

The Misconception of “More Is Better” in Player Development

[08:56] Krista Stoker: All of those things has to keep happening for that. 

[08:59] Anna Nickel: So one thing I think is incredible that OGX is providing is information for softball pitchers. I don't really see a ton of information out there for softball pitchers in general, let alone data-driven approaches to pitching development. When you think about OGX and that mission to provide that information, did you get pushback or did you just recognize there's this huge opportunity for information for pitchers and just start diving in?

Why OGX Focused on Softball Pitching First

[09:27] Krista Stoker: Yeah, I think that for us, the reason, especially on the pitching front, you know, we also do the same work on hitting. Hitting has the benefit, although it we, you know, we're seeing some nuances for sure as we're diving more into it. But hitting has the benefit of having baseball and having the access to baseball data.

[09:43] Krista Stoker: And what we're starting to learn now is the nuances and pitching. We led with that because when we started trying to find information, it just didn't exist. Softball pitching is a unique skill. It doesn't exist anywhere else. You're not gonna pull information. For a while, people were trying to compare it to baseball pitching, but it really

[10:01] Krista Stoker: isn't it like baseball pitching? I mean, that's a totally different move. That's, we would argue more complicated. We just knew we had to really get to the bottom of what the heck is even happening in the motion. And then, what makes a good pitcher? You know, what makes a pitcher get swings and misses? What makes a pitcher not get, uh, barrels on the ball?

What Makes a Successful Softball Pitcher?

[10:24] Narration: Softball pitching is one of the most technical movements in sports. When done well, underhand motion is fluid and looks natural, but it requires an incredible amount of training, coordination, and repetition. So Krista and her team wanted to understand what would perform well in-game and how to teach it.

[10:43] Krista Stoker: We had access to things like Rapsodo that were portable ball flight monitors that you could get on a bullpen. So you could start making inferences between, I have pitcher A's data, and then she goes and pitches at the very highest level of our game and she has a ton of success. So we assume that this type of pitch profile has success at that level, and that's what we did for most of the beginning of OGX is just continue to gather more and more information like that and to start to put together a profile of what type of pitcher has success at what type of level.

The Value of In-Game Data for Pitching Development

[11:15] Krista Stoker: What I think is really exciting in the past couple years is that so many programs now have in-game data, and we've been pushing for this for a really long time, which is, the game is not gonna really shift until two things happen: 1e have access to in-game data, that we even have units on the field, and then that people share it, that they're willing to share that information.

[11:33] Krista Stoker: And so we have access now because of the work that we do at the college level to, you know, thousands and thousands of in-game data points. So the more we can get actual in-game data where you had the result right there, the more we can start learning more and more as a community of how we're gonna keep pushing the game forward and what we're trying to make the pitchers be able to do, where it's not like we think this will work. Like, we hope what we're creating with you is gonna have success at the next level.

[12:00] Krista Stoker: That we can be a little bit more sure in that. So, as far as pushback, I think yes, at the early stages of OGX, we've, we've had a pushback for sure. I, I don't think the game is in a place where that's happening. I will say that softball is like, we say this a lot, but it's just a very collaborative space.

[12:19] Krista Stoker: It's pretty powerful if you look at the game and how willing people are if they have access to the information to grow. And so I think for us, we, we were never deterred by that because I think some of the pushback was just. They didn't have access to that. And so really what it pushed us to do was continue to give access and information to the community generally, and to continue to push companies, tech companies, and other people who are in the space to keep coming into the space and keep trying to give more and more access to that information because 

[12:50] Krista Stoker: the coaches are really willing to grow and learn, and that's what we've seen. And so the game can actually accelerate at a really fast pace. We just need access to it.

How OGX Assesses Athletes with Biomechanics and Strength Testing

[13:02] Narration: Beyond the resources that OGX is putting out into the world to push the game of softball forward, when they work with individual players, everything starts with a biomechanics assessment —a deep dive into who they are as an athlete, whether they're a pitcher or a hitter. The assessment pairs performance data like swing speed, pitch profile, and mechanics with strength and power testing to create a clear, detailed snapshot of how the athlete moves and where they have room to grow.

[13:29] Narration: What OGX has built is a constant feedback loop. Through radar video analysis, wellness check-ins, and regular reassessments, athletes are given clarity and direction.

[13:43] Krista Stoker: A lot of times when athletes come to us for their first biomechanics assessment, they feel like they've been throwing darts at the wall. Like they have no idea, am I moving in the right direction? Am I right about what makes me good? Am I right that I could play at this level or, or couldn't play at this level?

[13:58] Krista Stoker: And so putting that information very objectively in front of them of, you know, we have thousands and thousands and thousands of data points at this point. We have a good sense with the information we have in front of us, and it keeps evolving, obviously, with where you are and what makes you successful.

[14:13] Krista Stoker: What's holding you back from being successful? And they feel really empowered in that. We've taken a lot of time in how we deliver that information to make it digestible for them, to make it really athlete friendly, to lead with the stuff they care about, you know? 'Cause sometimes you can talk about a lot of things there, but I think that's the way we do it, is just putting information out there.

[14:37] Narration: Sometimes the data reveals something a player never expected and can be the unlock to changing their game for the better. 

[14:44] Krista Stoker: We had an athlete who came to us as a senior in high school, and she was going to a division one program, and she threw, uh, curve, uh, screw. So it was like east west pitches primarily in travel ball. 

[14:58] Narration: Just like they do in every assessment,

[15:00] Narration: OGX analyzed her pitches and something stood out. 

[15:01] Krista Stoker: But she had a minus nine, so a big sinking pitch fastball. Um, and she was like, we don't throw fastballs. And so part of the assessment was like, no, that's your pitch. That's actually the pitch at the next level that can have success for you. And she went in her freshman year and that is what she was — a down ball pitcher at that level

[15:22] Krista Stoker: and she had a ton of success that way. 

Helping Athletes Become Their Own Best Coach

[15:28] Krista Stoker: We didn't have to develop anything else. It was just like you, you aren't maximizing yourself in a way that scales at the next level. Even 14-year-olds, if you show them like see how your hand's here, we could just give it a little bit here at release,

[15:39] Krista Stoker: they find ways to do it and then to get more break on the pitch when they're given that sort of feedback that the loop of both the video and then the data. And that constant loop and interaction with the data, they can actually make a lot of change. So I think that's another example of where the data and sort of the, the feedback it becomes like they become their own coach in it and that's really powerful.

The Growing Injury Crisis in Softball Pitching

[16:03] Krista Stoker: One of the things we're seeing in, and I know that there's injury epidemic in, in baseball as well with, you know, things like Tommy John, but in softball pitching, I think we're really seeing a lot of injuries. And it's not these Tommy John's like random, acute things. It's these over time, broken down, I got overthrown,

[16:25] Krista Stoker: I was the only pitcher in high school. I was, you know, these stories we hear over and over of, I had these injuries come up. All of a sudden we hit this point where the colleges were really feeling that at the same time, our game was really trying to grow. We're like, oh, now I have all these pitchers coming to me who have had these injuries, who are dealing with this pain, who can't pitch at the level that maybe, you know, we did at one point in our game as the demands of the game have continued to increase.

[16:49] Krista Stoker: And so I think to go to the collaboration and the growth of these coaches, the coaches weren't like, well. Oh, well here we are. I think they went out and were like, what are we supposed to do about this? And so you started to see shifts in the game of throwing staffs. And then if we're gonna use staffs, you know, that usually is based on data or some understanding of what doesn't even mean to use a staff, because that was not something that softball did traditionally. That we're gonna have to buy into a different youth approach or what we're encouraging our youth athletes to do.

[17:18] Krista Stoker: We're gonna have to talk about workload, we're gonna have to do these things. And I just think softball coaches because, and the softball community generally is so much more willing to face those problems and try to find solutions because we've had to be scrappy and we've had to do those things, and it's just a different collaborative community that I think has a lot of exciting opportunities.

[17:39] Anna Nickel:  Do you see injuries as the biggest challenge that young players are facing today? 

Understanding Fatigue and Injury in Adolescent Athletes

[17:46] Krista Stoker: I think injuries and fatigue generally, but I think that the fact that fatigue leads to injuries. The biggest thing that we should be trying to do at the youth level, if we're talking about growing the game, is to just have more and more players. Growing from the grassroots just means that we have more players, you know?

[18:03] Krista Stoker: And I think for a while between where youth sports is kind of going and COVID and we saw kind of a trend down for softball, and I think we're starting to trend back up, but that's really what we need to be accomplishing. And if in that, I'm a 13-year-old, 14-year-old girl and I'm having intense back pain that is painful when I sleep and when I try to go to school and I'm doing these things like you're gonna not keep those players in the game.

[18:30] Krista Stoker: We see it a lot during that time period. So you know, from the 12-to-14 time period is most common when girls hit puberty and right in that time period as they're growing, we often see these stress fractures in the back. We see hip pain. We see these kind of, like I said, these aren't acute things. I'm not talking about like a step on a base wrong and I, I tore my ACL, but these things that just are coming from a, a chronic workload that is too high for an athlete that age.

The Complexity of Softball Pitching Mechanics for Young Athletes

[18:57] Aman Loomba: Is that the issue? Is the issue that they're being played too hard, the workload is too high, or is a mechanical problem or what, what's going on? 

[19:03] Krista Stoker: I think it's both. It's a really complicated skill and it's, you know, this is more common in pitchers just because by the nature of pitching, you're throwing over and over and over, right?

[19:13] Krista Stoker: The repetitive, but we see it in something like a catcher who is being asked to squat a lot. You know, there are certainly position players that deal with this as well, but most commonly in pitchers just because of what, what they're being asked to do all the times. And I think it's a combination of, it's an age where an athlete cannot actually do that skill.

[19:30] Krista Stoker: Like it's a very complicated skill. And so there are breakdowns, not like, oh my gosh, your patterns are so bad, but. Oh my gosh. You're a 12-year-old, like, and we're asking you to do an extremely complicated movement, and so not surprisingly, you can't quite do it efficiently, which is fine. And then on top of that, I'm gonna now have you do that at a volume that is, that is a lot, that's very high.

[19:51] Krista Stoker: And I think there's a variety of reasons that happens. One is that because during that time period, girls are hitting puberty at such different time periods. We start by 12 to have weeded out so many pitchers. Not every softball pitcher is throwing underhand. I think maybe that's a question that we can start to have of why we aren't teaching every softball player to be able to throw underhand.

[20:13] Krista Stoker: But I can't just grab my center fielder. So if Sally starts to throw balls at 10U, but she's the only kid that can throw strikes, I leave her in there and I, I don't have anyone else to go to. And so I think we're, it's this combination of, it's a very unique skill in our game where we're, we don't just have every single person on the field that can do it.

[20:32] Krista Stoker: And when they're very first being introduced to it. You got Sally who hit puberty two years ago, who's five eight, and Susie, who's five foot and is three years from puberty. And so I'm going with the five eight kid. And then the little kid never learns to pitch and now the five eight kids hurt, you know, in two years.

The Case for Training More Pitchers

[20:50] Krista Stoker: And so now I've weeded out everyone. So I definitely think that is a massive challenge for our game. The coaching is a little behind right now, and I think injury and kind of weeding out kids and not understanding what makes a pitcher successful and all of that is definitely the leading culprit of that sort of disadvantage right now.

[21:07] Aman Loomba: Seems like a big opportunity actually to train a lot of new pitchers. 

[21:11] Krista Stoker: Yes. 

[21:12] Aman Loomba: Because, um, is there a movement to limit pitch counts presently in softball or, or no 'cause that's not really gonna solve the problem anyway. 

[21:17] Krista Stoker: Yeah, not really. Mm-hmm. 

[21:19] Aman Loomba: So then the movement has to be about creating more pitchers and giving some relief to those who are already 

[21:24] Krista Stoker: Right.

[21:24] Aman Loomba: Taking all the responsibility. 

Why High School Softball Is Losing Pitchers

[21:26] Krista Stoker: Yeah. And I think the biggest issue, you start to see the sign of this issue, I guess, is that. The high school teams don't have enough pitchers. I mean, that's the very first thing that you see. So, in travel ball, I'll get Sally from Ohio to come four hours and be on my team.

[21:39] Krista Stoker: Like I start to, if I'm a high level travel team, I just start to pull outside of my community. But in high school I can't do that. And what's starting to happen now is that I'm a high school pitcher. I'm the only kid that can throw a lot, and I'm starting to not play high school because I know that if I go into that high school season and I have to throw 42 games.

[21:59] Krista Stoker: I'm gonna be hurt. And so you're seeing people choose not to play in high school as pitchers because they know they're gonna get overthrown and they don't wanna do that because of, you know, what the next level is. So I think the place that's hit the hardest right now is those high school programs. What I would say for those high school coaches is to like go to the middle school level.

Growing the Next Generation of Pitchers

[22:18] Krista Stoker: Start to really build out, encourage everyone on that middle school team, that sixth grade team, to pitch and start to see if you can help support the community growth of that. So I think if high school coaches and rec coaches at that level, that 12U and 10U and travel ball coaches can kind of get together in that

[22:38] Krista Stoker: at the local space. So forget once you kind of move out of that local play, but in the local space at that age, and let's start to build the desire and the ability for people to pitch. I think that's really where it needs to happen at that age is I think the 8U to 12U age. That's the key. It doesn't, by the time we get to 16U, you're not having someone throw underhand at that point.

[22:58] Krista Stoker: Uh, it's just not gonna happen. 

[22:59] Anna Nickel: I see a lot of hunger from young coaches. So they coach 6, 7, 8 U softball pitchers and they say, I don't know how to pitch. I don't know how to teach anyone how to pitch. What resources exist within the space and it's tough. 

[23:13] Krista Stoker: Mm-hmm. 

[23:13] Anna Nickel:There are very few sources out there who provide a program for a Little League coach to take in their hand and say, we are going to do this to help you develop.

[23:29] Anna Nickel: I'm wondering if OGX feels like that is a place where you guys can help close the gap and even provide more data, more support for those coaches? 

[23:37] Krista Stoker: We're trying to build out, continue to build more free resources that we can give to coaches. And I think that really is the space. And I think you're right that it's hard for coaches at that level to find resources.

[23:49] Krista Stoker: I think a big part of it is that in the past, you know, when we played, it's hard to like think of maybe there, this was a space where we had more resources at the time, but it might have been a space where we had more resource at the time because local softball was so much bigger and so when I first started coaching 20 years ago, I just went on to USA Softball's website.

[24:08] Krista Stoker: I think it's ASA at the time. I can picture Mike Candrea, like showing me how to teach overhand throwing, and there were all these places to go. But as that cohesion and sanctioning body, and because it's moved away from local sports, as we've lost that, we've also lost as, as that age coach, a place to go to get resources for how to coach overhand, how to.

Building a Shared Resource Hub for Youth Softball

[24:31] Krista Stoker: teach pitching, like any of those access. So I think the more that we can all be trying to cohesively give resources to those coaches, I think is really important because they don't know where to go. I just have to arbitrarily search YouTube and hope that where I land is like the right approach. And so I think as a community, because we know we've kind of split in sanctions, not in a.

[24:55] Krista Stoker: disagreement way. That's just how the game has sort of gone. There needs to be a place where maybe we come back together and we all pool our resources to help some of those youth coaches because I, I do think that is a, a challenging place for a youth coach. You have a dad who played baseball. It's like, I don't wanna tell him not to coach 'cause I'm sure he is a great coach, but you're right.

[25:13] Krista Stoker: How is he gonna teach pitching? He's like, I don't, I don't know how to do that. You know? It's become challenging. 

How Club vs. High School Ball Is Reshaping the Game

[25:18] Aman Loomba: Yeah. The, the acceleration of, um, participation into club and travel teams and the movement away from the local and especially the high school space, is something that we're observing across every sport at this time.

[25:31] Aman Loomba: It's really interesting to hear you talk about some of the ways in which it even reinforces itself. Because club teams intrinsically have more access to more pitchers. If I'm a pitcher, I don't wanna go play for my high school 'cause I'm gonna have to pitch too many games. That's really fascinating. So now there's even more reason.

[25:46] Aman Loomba: It's just like feeding back on itself. The one thing that we see in our data that's interesting is, at least in baseball, where I've studied the data, the most closely, club is still really outpacing high school. But we're getting a lot of recreational growth at the younger age levels, which to me is indicative of more participation at the younger age levels.

[26:03] Aman Loomba: So I think there's some good signs that. And Yes, going all the way back to COVID that things are starting to look a little better. 

How OGX is Cutting Through the Noise

[26:09] Anna Nickel: Something you just said really resonated with me, which is it's almost overwhelming the amount of information that's out there and it is very hard to parse through what is actually helpful.

[26:22] Anna Nickel: What is actually Data driven, data informed, which is why I think OGX is so exciting. You are not out there to tell your opinion. You are out there sharing information. You've seen the development cycles, you've seen improvement. You've seen actually athletes go backwards and then how to put them back on track.

[26:46] Narration: Anna highlights an important point. For parents and coaches, it can feel overwhelming to sort through all the information out there. That's why what OGX does is so valuable. They help remove some of the guesswork, offering clarity for athletes across all stages of development, and sometimes that clarity is as simple as understanding what's happening in an athlete's body.

What Puberty Means for Softball Mechanics

[27:09] Krista Stoker: One of the biggest things we talk about at that age that we've been talking about the youth age, is that girls, when they go through puberty, different than boys. Get bigger hips. They're like pelvis literally grows. They put on body fat. These are all different things than what happened to boys at that time period.

[27:25] Krista Stoker: And so a rotational sport becomes harder for at least a while while they are readjusting to their body. And so one of the things that we'll see during that time period is that pitchers all of a sudden who were good, who were having a lot of success, start throwing the ball over the catcher's head into the ground, hitting a batter.

[27:42] Krista Stoker: They go through this spell. And one of the like most powerful things we've sort of demystified, I think in that process is we'll say, did she recently hit puberty? They'll be like, yeah, she actually grew four inches last month. And we're like, just, she'll be all right. You give her some plyos, just have her keep working to hit a target.

[27:59] Krista Stoker: She just literally needs to recalibrate to her body. It's totally changing. You know, she's reorienting to a totally different space and give her time to do that. And you know, they often come out the other side of that and I think that process is so important. So I think when we're talking about data and science, yes, it's

Data is More Than Just Velocity

[28:17] Krista Stoker: the plus four rise ball and the velocity that gets swings and misses is just high level data, but it's also what even happens to a girl at puberty? How do softball players develop? How am I gonna continue to scale things up for a softball player? That's all data too. That's all science and data points and research.

[28:34] Krista Stoker: And so every level of that is important for that process, and that's the information that we have to keep putting back and the parent and coach's hands so we can keep growing the game.

[28:46] Narration: In a sport that's growing rapidly with new tools, new expectations, and new challenges, what can we encourage young athletes to do to keep moving forward? 

[28:55] Anna Nickel: If you could tell an athlete one piece of advice for their development journey. What would you tell that athlete? 

The Most Powerful Developmental Tools of All

[29:05] Krista Stoker: Learn as much about yourself as you can.

[29:09] Krista Stoker: Use whatever access you have to information to continue to learn as much about yourself as you can so that you are in control of your own journey. I think the more that you can have the sort of power and information about yourself in your own hands, so that as you're continuing to make decisions as you go, that you can.

[29:28] Krista Stoker: I think that that is so powerful as you continue to grow up the system. So I think obviously as a very young athlete, that's probably some collaboration with your parents to make sure that you guys have that information, and as you continue to go up the game, that that becomes more and more held by you and that you really understand that because coaches are gonna change.

[29:47] Krista Stoker: You asked me who like my favorite coach was. My brother wasn't my coach my whole life. Your whole career can't be determined by hoping that you have a coach that's perfect match for you and your development. And so the more you can be in control of that information and journey and understand yourself, the more that all of the environmental changes and the coach changes and the journey

[30:09] Krista Stoker: sort of becomes irrelevant in your development, which is as it should be. It just becomes helpful when it's really positive for you, um, and not detrimental when maybe it's not quite the match that you're looking for.

[30:24] Narration: Throughout this conversation, we've seen how OGX is helping reshape the system by sharing what they're learning, giving athletes the tools to understand themselves, and helping coaches and parents know what really matters. If you're a coach or parent looking for ways to take some of the guesswork out of development, OGX offers practical resources on everything from biomechanics to managing workloads.

[30:46] Narration: You can find links to their podcast and other tools we talked about today in the show notes. This has been Athletic Intelligence from GameChanger. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow, rate, and share it. I hope you'll join us next time as we uncover the tech that's shaping the game.