SKANSTRENGTH
SkanStrength Baseball & Softball School
A 100% development-focused program and pipeline of progression for athletes who want to
make a team, become a starter, and play at a higher level.
About SkanStrength Baseball & Softball School
SkanStrength Baseball & Softball School offers year-round lessons, clinics, camps, and developmental programs for baseball and softball players in Central New York. We are unaffiliated with travel programs, and our primary focus is training players who want consistent, year-round development outside of their team commitments.
We believe families need flexible options that run year-round — for kids between seasons, for in-season tune-ups, and especially for kids who only play rec or school ball and want to keep developing outside of those seasons.
Youth baseball and softball have changed a lot over the past 15 to 20 years. Seasons are longer, costs have grown across the board, and tryouts now start as early as elementary school. For many families, that means making harder choices about what's feasible — financially, logistically, and in terms of protecting the family time they want.
SkanStrength Baseball & Softball School is an in-between option.
For kids who don't play travel ball but still want serious coaching and a real path to develop. For travel ball kids who want focused, individual work between tournaments and seasons. And for kids who've been cut, are rebuilding confidence, or just want to keep playing the game they love.
Wherever your athlete is, we meet them there and help them keep growing.
A comprehensive approach to develop well-rounded ball players.
Varying opportunities for different schedules & budgets.
We offer programs that range from multi-week blocks of training to short-term clinics and camps. The variety is intentional — it lets families pick and choose what fits their budget, their schedule, and the rest of their lives. A long block of training works for some families. A three-day camp works for others. Both move an athlete forward.
A healthy, science-backed approach
to youth athletic development.
Our coaching is grounded in the physical and psychological science of how young athletes healthily develop.
We follow the principles of Long-Term Athletic Development, the same framework adopted by USA Baseball and other national governing bodies. At young ages, training, skill-building, and free play matter more than formal games. The kids who keep getting better are the ones who fall in love with the work itself — practicing in the backyard, throwing balls against the wall, working on their swing in the lunch line. Our job is to coach in a way that nurtures that, not crushes it.
Comprehensive programs, covering multiple skills.
Most of our programs train multiple skillsets at once. Catching School includes hitting. Pitching School includes hitting. Sessions often run 90 to 120 minutes — built to feel like a real practice and alotting enough time to train skills, comprehensively. The goal is to develop well-rounded ball players without families having to piece together separate services to get the same coverage.
Explore our Programs
Pick the path that fits — or layer them together and check back regularly, we're always adding.
General Skills Training
Fielding, Throwing & Hitting
Catching School
Catcher Development Program
Meet Our Coaches
Coach Dan
Dan Flanick is the owner and head coach of SkanStrength in Skaneateles, New York, and the Associate Head Baseball Coach at Cayuga Community College.
Dan has spent more than twenty-five years in athletics as an athlete, strength and conditioning coach, and sport coach. His career began in the Hudson Valley, where early experience in competitive sports led to a Division II baseball scholarship at Molloy College. After stepping away from the game during college — following the loss of a family member and a period of burnout — Dan found his way back through coaching and athletic development.
He transferred to Ithaca College to study Exercise Science and graduated in 2014. He then served as a Strength & Conditioning intern at Cornell University, working across baseball, football, basketball, track and field, and equestrian sports. From Cornell he went to Baylor University in 2014 as a Graduate Assistant in one of the country's top Division I athletic programs, training under Coach Kaz Kazadi — the 2013 collegiate Strength Coach of the Year — and working with football, tennis, acrobatics and tumbling, and cross-country. He earned his Master's degree in Sport Pedagogy at Baylor in 2015.
After graduate school, Dan returned home to Central New York. In 2017, he and his family opened SkanStrength in a 500-square-foot space below a local bar. Over the years that followed, they grew it into a 7,500-square-foot facility serving thousands of people across a wide range of ages, abilities, and athletic goals.
Today, Dan coaches at SkanStrength while also serving on the baseball staff at Cayuga Community College. Over his career, he has worked with an unusually broad range of populations, including individuals with disabilities — athletes with Down syndrome, autism, and other intellectual and developmental disabilities — as well as youth, high school, and college athletes in baseball, softball, and a wide variety of sports - lacrosse, hockey, basketball, soccer, wrestling, tennis, golf, etc..
Dan brings deep baseball coaching experience to his work. A former catcher himself, he has coached catching, hitting, throwing, and all-around baseball development — from youth and Little League levels through high school and college athletes.
As Associate Head Coach at Cayuga Community College, Dan runs day-to-day player development, catching instruction, and strength and conditioning for the NJCAA program.
His approach combines strength and conditioning, sport-specific skill development, a healthy pedagogical approach, and the mental skills and confidence-building that athletes need to perform — built around a long-view philosophy of healthy, sustainable athletic development. Dan is particularly focused on what keeps athletes healthy and improving over years, not just weeks and seasons.
Dan holds a B.S. in Exercise Science from Ithaca College and a Master's in Sport Pedagogy from Baylor University.
Coach Cregg
Cregg Scherrer is a Skaneateles native and former semi-professional baseball player.
A 2019 graduate of Skaneateles High School, Cregg was a four-year varsity player and earned All-CNY honors in both 2018 and 2019. He was also named an Under Armour Preseason All-American his senior year — one of the top underclassman distinctions in the country.
Cregg took his game to the Division I level at the University at Albany, where he spent five seasons (2019–2024) in the America East Conference. In the summer of 2022, he earned a roster spot in the Cape Cod Baseball League — widely regarded as the most competitive summer collegiate league in the country — and helped his team capture the Cape League Championship that season.
Since 2025, Cregg has played professionally with the Trenton Thunder and the Rocky Mountain Vibes.
Coach Cregg works with youth, high school, and college athletes on all aspects of the sport ranging from baseball to hitting and fielding, healthy mindsets, and habits that carried him from Skaneateles baseball to the professional level.
Coach Phil
Coach Phil is a coach with 25+ years of experience with pitching and instruction. Phil grew up in Northwest Indiana where he began playing baseball at 6 years old and eventually earning a scholarship to Division II Purdue Northwest University.
In 2017, Phil earned his Bachelor of Science-Biology from Purdue University, where he then began his coaching career with the Pride. He worked with Dave Griffin and Shane Prance to develop a velocity and strength program for the Pride.
After his stint at PNW, he had the opportunity to coach in Palm Springs where he coached top prospects through NCAA/NAIA/Junior College Athletics. His time there was developing collegiate athletes to move them on with their already recognizable statistics and to provide them the opportunity to move onto conferences throughout the country.
Madvek’s summer opportunity brought him to Ohio, where he was a strength and conditioning coach and assistant pitching coach as a graduate assistant at Tiffin University. With the Dragons, he was under Joe Wilkins and Brandon Cantrill, where he worked together with them to develop a strength/velocity program to get them to winning the conference tournament his first season. His experience kept the team in the running with statistics all around conference and injury free throughout the season.
Madvek’s latest experience brough him to D-Bat Mokena as a pitching instructor/coach. He moved to New York in 2020 where he is currently a Science Teacher in the Syracuse City School District and a pitching instructor throughout Onondaga County (SkanStrength).
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