Coach (Matt) Schilling,

I know it’s been a while since we’ve talked, but I was with the Grzymala’s this past weekend and we were talking about all the Baseball Factory programs, and I wanted to thank you again for your help and training over the past few years, and update you a little bit about the direction I’ve headed since I was last in Maryland.

The training you guys give down there is outstanding, and the feedback is decisively honest (which it needs to be, and which you don’t find many other developmental places).  My dad and I still maintain that if you compared my batting average the three weeks after training with you to my average the rest of the time, the difference was probably enormous.  I always returned from a lesson hitting the ball with more power and consistency than when I had long stints without making the trip down.  My mom would call us crazy sometimes, but it was undoubtedly worth the trip and the money for every lesson.

I took the baseball recruiting game for all it was worth, but when all was said and done I took academics over baseball, as I long thought I would.  My decision came down to the Wharton School at Penn, where I had little chance to play, and Wash. U in St. Louis, where Coach Lessmann let me sit in the dugout for a game and told me I should come out for the team and see what happens.  It was a tough decision for me, but Wharton was just too good to pass up, so I decided to come here.  It was a great decision…I love everything about it here – from academics to the social scene to the athletics.  The club baseball team had fall tryouts, and I made the team pretty easily.  There’s obviously a lot of time left, but I think I have a pretty decent shot at starting (or at least getting good time) up the middle when the season begins.  Also (and ironically enough), I decided to walk on to the Sprint Football team in the fall, which is Varsity lightweight football team that only a few schools have around the country.  Our league is Penn, Cornell, Navy, Army, and Princeton.  I’m playing safety, and although I didn’t get a ton of time, I returned an interception 40 yards for a touchdown against Princeton, our team’s only defensive score of the year.  We have a young team, and the next few years look pretty promising.

My brother Dave’s doing well too, and he continues playing at a high level on local AAU teams that travel throughout the northeast.  He’s 14 and in 8^th grade now, so you should be hearing from my dad about him pretty soon, and as far as I know they’ll be making the same trips that I did.

Hope all is well with you, and that the Baseball Factory continues to do what it does best. 

Thanks again for all your training and feedback over the years,

 Greg Hollander