Welcome To SlapYOUniversity: Why This Exists
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[00:00:00] Slap hitting is not dead. The knowledge and access needed to develop it simply aren't available everywhere. Welcome to the SlapYOUniversity Podcast, where athletes, parents, and coaches come to learn the game, challenge their mindset, and elevate their approach. I'm India Chiles, co-founder of SlapYOUniversity, and alongside my co-founder, Ashley Chew, we're here to share the lessons, experiences, and strategies we've learned from playing, coaching, and teaching this game.
Because at SlapYOUniversity, we believe the best investments you can make is in you. Let's get into it for this episode, I want to explain why SlapYOUniversity exists, and I think the best place to begin is with the name itself. So there are three parts to it, slap, you, and university. Slap is what we do. We slap it, we study it, we train it, and we work to master it.
The middle portion, you, is at the heart of this platform because SlapYOUniversity [00:01:00] was created to train you. We want you to invest in yourself. That may mean you as an athlete taking ownership of your development. It may mean you as a parent learning how to train your child. It may mean you as a coach becoming better equipped to develop the slap hitters on your roster.
Or it may mean you as an instructor building your knowledge, expanding your services, and growing your own business. No matter which role you play, this platform was designed to help you learn and teach slap hitting with greater knowledge and confidence. The final part of the name is university. That is intentional because this is more than a collection of random drills or disconnected instructional videos.
We've organized slap hitting into a course curriculum with structured lessons, training modules, and progressions designed to help elevate your game or the game of the athletes you serve. It's a system, and it is a system that has been tried and proven over time by me. [00:02:00] The fundamentals I teach today are rooted in the same fundamentals I was teaching more than ten years ago.
Those fundamentals have not disappeared, but the game has continued to evolve. So what we know is pitchers are more advanced. Slap hitters have to be prepared to handle the rise ball, the drop curve, the curve ball, the screw ball. What about the screw ball that rises? Then there's off-speed pitches and the different ways that the defense attempts to take the short game away.
My system has evolved to meet those demands while remaining grounded in the fundamentals that make slap hitting work. SlapYOUniversity exists to make that complete system now available to you. So why did it take so long? If I'm being honest, part of it was fear of failure. Another part was feeling overwhelmed by the size of this project.
I knew how much knowledge I wanted to share. I knew how much material needed to be organized, recorded, and explained. It was easy to set this idea aside because [00:03:00] building something of this magnitude felt like a lot to take on. And then lastly, if I'm being honest, it was me being selfish. Slap hitting is a craft that few of us truly know how to teach.
I look to and look up to Natasha Watley, and I lean into Caitlin Lowe as fellow experts of this in the game today. We have a lot in common, but there is one thing we don't, and that's geography. They both live on the West Coast. So I've enjoyed sort of monopolizing the industry on the East Coast and the Midwest.
I've held it as my little secret weapon and said to myself, "Do I really wanna give this away?" But the idea never left me. It became especially heavy on my mind during COVID. We were quarantining, practicing social distancing, and learning what it meant to work, communicate, and train virtually.
And even though quarantine ended, virtual learning did not. Many people still work from home, learn from home, and look for ways to use their time more efficiently. That created an [00:04:00] opportunity to solve a real problem within our game. Athletes can usually find someone within a reasonable distance for hitting instruction, defensive work, pitching instruction, or even catching instruction.
But players who are serious about slap hitting often have to travel much farther.
I want to change that. I want to give parents some of that time back. I wanna give athletes some of that time back. I also wanna reduce the money and energy families are spending simply trying to gain access to specialized instruction that they feel passionate will elevate their child's game.
SlapYOUniversity gives athletes and parents a way to train at home at their own place and at their own pace. But this platform is not only for families. It's also for college coaches, high school coaches, travel ball coaches, and organizations that wanna feel confident and fully equipped to develop the slap hitters already on their rosters.
It's for the coach who sees an athlete with the speed and athletic ability to benefit [00:05:00] from moving from the right to left side. It's for the coach who already has a left-handed hitter and recognize that adding the short game could make her a more complete offensive threat. All of these things are not just gonna turn into wins.
They're turning into life-changing opportunities that could be the door that opens for their kid to play in college or to even get to college.
SlapYOUniversity can help educate and equip someone on your staff to take ownership of that role.
You can also use our consultations and support to help your coaches apply the system to the athletes they're currently developing. Ultimately, this is an opportunity for programs to play faster, for programs to win more games, for programs to truly elevate. Watch the Women's College World Series, and you'll continue to see teams use the speed game to pressure defenses.
Slap hitting is not dead. The knowledge and access needed to develop it simply aren't available everywhere. Sometimes coaches move [00:06:00] away from the speed game 'cause they don't know where to find qualified instruction. Sometimes they don't have time to study it thoroughly, and other times they reached out for help and haven't received the support they needed.
When we don't feel equipped to complete a task, it's natural to avoid it altogether. SlapYOUniversity exists to remove that barrier. I have worked with athletes who trained seriously throughout high school, earned college scholarships at the highest levels, and secured roster spots. But once they arrived on campus, they begin to struggle.
Their performance begins to decline. Their frustrations increase. Their coaches become frustrated too. And sometimes the problem was not effort or ability, the problem was that no one on the staff knew how to pick up where their previous slap hitting instruction ended. Now they can. gives coaches a system they can use to continue developing those athletes and take them even further.
I also believe, and I want [00:07:00] athletes to start asking more questions during the recruiting process now that this platform exists. They want and need to know, "Hey, coach, I wanna come to your school, but who's gonna train me?" And, "What's your style of slap hitting instruction?" If the athlete has used SlapYOUniversity or has trained under myself to some capacity, it's a seamless transition for them to come to college and train under a coach who's also had that knowledge
So programs need to be prepared to answer that question. My vision is to see more confident and complete slap hitters competing on television throughout Division One, two, and three in the NAIA, on travel ball teams, and at high schools across the country. They exist. The slap hitters are there on all of these teams.
They're just not doing it the right way.
We know what speed can do to a defense. We know how disruptive an effective slap hitter can be. Now, we need to make the knowledge required to [00:08:00] develop those players more accessible, and that's why SlapYOUniversity exists. Athletes can train themselves. Parents can learn to train their children while saving time and travel.
Coaches can develop the players already on their rosters and confidently introduce the skill to new athletes. Instructors can expand their knowledge, strengthen their resumes, pursue certification, grow their clientele, and potentially build an entirely new part of their business. Whether you serve one athlete, an entire team, or a large organization, there is an opportunity to become the person who provides the slap hitting knowledge your community has been missing.
SlapYOUniversity is my way of giving back to the game. It is the system I've developed, tested, refined, and trusted throughout my career, now organized and made available to you. Let's save time, let's save money, let's save energy, and most importantly, let's make sure that athletes with the ability to change the [00:09:00] game have access to the instruction they need
train at your place,
train at your pace. Invest in you and welcome to SLAPYOUniversity
If you found value in today's episode, I'd love for you to subscribe, share it with another athlete, parent, or coach, and explore everything SlapYOUniversity has to offer. Until next time, keep learning, keep competing, keep creating opportunities, and remember, your next level is waiting. I'm Coach India Chiles, and I'll see you on the next episode of the SlapYOUniversity Podcast.
