Slammers Youth Athletic Testing Leaderboards
Athleticism is important. That's why we measure it.
Athleticism
Part 1 of 3. Next week, we’ll look at Slammers Youth Rapsodo Hitting Leaderboards.
Slammers utilizes the Loden Sports Performance Lab App to collect a Rebound Jumps test for each athlete and as a place to input and provide context for 10-yard and 30-yard run splits. The combination of the Rebound Jumps test and the 30-yard sprint with a 10-yard split allows each of our athletes to attain a Junior Power, Junior Quickness, Junior Speed, and Junior Loden Score – a true measure of their raw athleticism that correlates to things that matter on a baseball field. The Junior Loden Score is a comparative to the average 14-year-old athlete (6 is average). (All scores are 0-12)
Most of our youth athletes have a lot of growing to do still - which is great, because it means they have more time to improve things like jump height and sprint speed before they are full grown adults. Taking advantage of the developmental window to develop athleticism may be the single most important thing an a young athlete can do for their future - no matter what sport they play. And for this reason, we created Slammers Athletic Foundations to provide a summer program for all of our youth athletes that want to increase their athleticism in a fun and creative environment.
Junior Loden Score
The Junior Loden Score is an indicator of raw athleticism in an athlete. What kind of engine does this athlete have under the hood? Consider the Junior Loden Score to be the foundation that each athlete has to work off of – it’s not the end-all-be-all, but the Junior Loden Score is a good indicator for potential in an athlete. A Junior Loden Score of 6 is average for a 14-year-old athlete.
A pair of Slammers Bauer 14U players pace the youth group with Junior Loden Scores of 11: Thomas Shank and Charlie Kroell. A 2023 Slammers Athletic Foundations alum: Peyton Adams, cracked the top-10 athletes out of the 641 that tested between North and South.
Junior Loden Speed
Speed is pretty self-explanatory. The first of the Loden Score traits to appear in younger athletes, speed sets the bar for what the engine of the athlete can become. I don’t think there’s a world where you can overemphasize the importance of maximizing speed for every athlete in every sport. Speed kills. If you’re fast, being faster makes a difference. If you’re slow, being a little bit faster than slow makes a difference. The Junior Loden Speed Score is an index for top-end running speed. 6 is average for a 14-year-old athlete.
While a pair of Slammers South Youth athletes sat atop the overall athleticism (Junior Loden Score) leaderboard, it’s a pair of Slammers North Youth athletes at the top of the Speed Score leaderboard: Caden Koon (Slammers Crockett Jr. 14U) and Nick Leopardi (Slammers Bote 14U).
Rebound Jumps Power
The average jump power of 3 jumps from the players Rebound Jumps test using the Loden Sports Performance Lab App (Loden Power Points). Power is correlated to exit velocity and throwing velocity (and many other things across a number of sports).
In case you need a refresher - look no further: What is Power + Why is it important?
Rebound Jumps Height
The average jump height of the 3 jumps from the players Rebound Jumps test using the Loden Sports Performance Lab App (inches).
If you can jump high and you maintain that as you mature and add weight, your power is going to go up. For our youth athletes, looking at jump height is a glimpse into the future. Not to beat a dead horse here, but developing the ability to jump higher as a youth athlete will reap major rewards on the other side of puberty.
A quick shout out to Sean Goldy (Slammers Holzemer 2025; West Virginia Commit) and Trevor Gottsegen (Slammers Austin 2025; Iowa Commit) - our only high school guys to break 30 in. (Slammers Duman 2023 alum and 2023 San Francisco Giants 2nd Round Draft Pick, Walker Martin is another Slammer to have eclipsed 30 in.).
Team Athletic Testing Leaderboard
See below for a full list of all Slammers Youth teams that participated in athletic testing between December 2023 and January 2024 - listed in order by team average Junior Loden Score. Slammers Bauer 14U’s team average of 8.5 eclipses the top average score for a youth team in 2023 (Slammers Bozied 14U; 8.1).
Next week, we’ll share Slammers Youth Hitting Testing Leaderboards. All youth coaches have received all data on their teams, so if there are any immediate curiosities, they should be able to provide the data. All data from youth testing will populate into the Slammers Dashboard in the next month (and all parents / players will gain access to it there as well).