A Long Term, Health Focused Athletic Development Program for Catchers.
Catching School
Comprehensive athletic development for catchers. Catching, hitting, and long-term athletic development — tied together into a series of services for athletes who are committed to the process.
The SkanStrength Coaching Philosophy
Catching School Overview
Catching School is a developmentally focused approach to helping kids and families have a healthy, long-term, and flexible path to excelling at this position.
The training surrounds young athletes with healthy perspective — coaching that keeps bodies healthy, supports balance, and nurtures an intrinsic drive for improvement that comes from the young person. Multi-sport athletes are encouraged. The structure is flexible for varying budgets, busy schedules, and families balancing multiple commitments.
Catching School works as a complement to travel ball or as a standalone development path. Either way, the approach stays the same: age-appropriate coaching, individualized programming, and long-term athletic development.
The Three Disciplines
Catching School connects three areas of development into a single, integrated approach.
01
Catcher-Specific Training
Receiving, framing, blocking, throwing, game management — developed through a progressive, age-appropriate curriculum built on how catching skills actually sequence over time.
02
Hitting Development
Catchers hit. The best ones hit well. Hitting development is woven into the program because the swing and the squat share more athleticism than most coaches realize.
03
Strength & Conditioning for Catchers
Mobility, arm care, strength, power, and conditioning — all programmed specifically for the demands of catching. Training that supports what happens behind the plate.
Coach Dan's Passion Project
Catching School is the program Coach Dan wishes existed when he was coming up as a catcher. The resources to connect position-specific skill, athletic development, and long-term health in one place weren't available. They are now.
Coach Dan's expertise is in long-term athletic development — from youth through advanced levels. His background spans collegiate baseball coaching, strength and conditioning at the Division I level, and training athletes across sports including many collegiate athletes, a handful of professional athletes, and world-class freestyle wrestlers. He understands the process of healthy development from youth through the highest levels, and that perspective shapes everything about how Catching School is built.
Programs, Clinics & Mini-Camps
Coach Dan Flanick, MS
Dan Flanick is the Associate Head Baseball Coach at Cayuga Community College and has been around the game his entire life — over 25 years of playing and coaching. A former catcher who earned a scholarship to play D2 baseball at Molloy College, Dan stepped away from the game after losing a family member and experiencing burnout. That time away gave him perspective — and when baseball called him back to the diamond, he brought everything he'd built in the years between with him.
Dan went on to become a Strength & Conditioning Coach working in the collegiate sector at Cornell University and Baylor University as a graduate assistant, followed by opening SkanStrength where he trains youth through several professional athletes and everyone in between. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Exercise Science from Ithaca College and a Master's degree in Sport Pedagogy from Baylor University.
His combination of physiological and strength & conditioning understanding, pedagogical background, and baseball acumen make the programs highly unique and comprehensive — including all facets of the game from catching competency, hitting approach and technique, strength and conditioning, and heavy doses of sport psychology best practices built into the programs he runs.
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