A new Ames-based company is looking to help softball players train more effectively and get recruited by colleges.
The Company, Gritty Hitter, offers an online membership that provides athletes, coaches and parents with the content to help student athletes improve their skill set and help them get recruited by colleges.
“I was reached out to by Randy Schneider, a former D1 softball coach, and at the time he just wanted help for a website,” said Brady Trent, co-founder of Gritty Hitter. “I met up with him and we started talking and quickly realized it made a lot of sense for us to make a business together instead of me just building him a site.”
Since launching on Feb. 1, the site has had around 50 people sign up, Trent told Clay & Milk.
Athletes who sign up for a membership will receive virtual training videos, the ability to track their workouts and their own recruiting profile.
“Right now with the recruiting tools that are out there, someone will pay $2000 and have a recruiter go send out all these emails to college coaches. Those emails basically all go to spam now and unless you’re a really great player it’s not going to do anything for you,” Trent said. “Whereas what we do is only $150 a year for athletes and they get a recruiting profile, where we include all of their stats on there but focus on the grit. How hard do they work? How much are they tracking their workouts? How many videos are they watching? And then we calculate a grit score that we think is going to be more valuable to recruiters in the long run because that’s what recruiter really want to see.”
Gritty Hitter will be sponsoring the 144-team, PGF Stars and Stripes Tournament in St. Charles Illinois July 11-14th through a partnership with Dave Betcher Events.
The company is also working on a team program that will allow entire teams to sign up at once.
“Long-term we want to take this to every sport out there,” Trent said. “Right now we’re focusing on this niche with softball and just trying to conquer it and do it really well.”