It doesn’t look or feel like baseball season but HC Morgan Singletary and his Hopewell baseball program have been working hard in preparation for the 2024 High School baseball season.
While the regular season won’t get underway until later next month, the Vikings High School and Junior High programs have been holding workouts 3 days a week at the school.
The great majority of these players are accustomed to what’s expected of them during this time of season and it’s crucial to set the tone for the start of the season.
Hopewell Sports Nation caught up with Singletary and wanted to know from his perspective what’s his focus on during these workouts.
Thanks to our sponsors!
“During our winter workouts, we put a lot of focus into getting the players physically ready for the season,” said Singletary. “We have a big focus on building up arm strength, conditioning, speed, and foot work.”
“While we are inside, we don’t have a lot of room but we are able to get in a lot of reps. We focus on making the reps we take quality reps. We set up our routines and work on perfecting them. All of our routines have a purpose. We tried to explain their purpose so the players understand why we feel they are important and their intent.”
As the defending, WPIAL Champions are into their second month of team workouts, is Coach happy with what he’s seen to this point?
“I feel our workouts have been going really well,” said Singletary. “The guys seem to be in really good shape coming in and have done really well with the challenges we have thrown at them to this point.”
When the weather warms up, they’ll move outside but up until now, they’ve worked inside. If you think a lot can’t be accomplished because they’re indoors, you’d be wrong.
“Throwing: We work through an indoor throwing routine that helps build the players arms up.
Pitching: We work through bullpens to build up pitch counts.
Swing: We work through tee progressions to reinforce good movement patterns.
Hitting: We do several drills that work on timing, we stand in on bullpens and get live at bats during bullpens, and see velocity and breaking pitches off of the machine.
Defensive Drills: We do position specific drills to work on foot work, hands, and movement patterns.
Speed: we work through a speed program to help with our quickness, starts, and overall speed.
Conditioning: We work sprints in volume to build endurance and team unity.
Even though we are inside with limited space there is a lot we are able to do with intent to get better and improve on different aspects of our game.”
As weather improves and season approaches, the emphasis of what Coach Singletary and his staff focuses on will be changing.
“We will be finishing up our shoes and conditioning programs this week,” said Singletary. “Once those are done, we will start collecting metrics to track improvement from year to year. We will also be transitioning to more team oriented drills working on positioning, plays, and approaches. As the weather starts to break we take advantage of getting out on the turf as much as possible.”
Hopewell will enter the season with a target on their back and Singletary’s biggest challenge will be to replace a number of seniors that were a huge part of their success.
The start of a new season means new additions to both the high school and junior high program. I asked Coach about the current roster numbers for Hopewell HS and Junior High Baseball.
“Our numbers aren’t very high but the players we have want to be there,” said Singletary. “They show up to morning lifts, after school, and evening workouts regularly. They understand commitment. When you have a group that works as hard as these guys do, it’s hard not to be happy with them. No matter what the results of the season end up being, these guys have worked through the process and I’m already proud of what they have accomplished and our season hasn’t even started yet.”
