Episode Transcript
[00:00:02] Speaker A: Hey parents and coaches, are your kids using the right glove? The most important skill for youth athletes to learn is how to play proper catch. The problem is most youth gloves are made with bad leather and are too big for small hands. They actually make it harder to play catch. That's why former Major League Baseball shortstop Kevin Smith created Cali Gloves. Cali gloves are crafted from 100% Japanese kip leather and are the perfect size for kids.
All Cali gloves come with palm slits, finger loops and elastic wrist lacing that encourage proper hand placement. The right closing patterns and give kids more confidence to go make plays. Cali Gloves even allow parents to break in the glove without stretching out the fit.
It's the glove Kevin wishes he had growing up and the glove all his teammates want for their kids. Visit caligloves.com to learn more and help your kids play better catch.
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[00:01:10] Speaker B: welcome to this week's edition of in the Clubhouse of EMD Baseball. I'm Andy Kira Kitties, joined by my Wonderful Co host, Mr. Keith Glasser. How are we doing sir?
[00:01:18] Speaker C: Great.
[00:01:18] Speaker D: How are you?
[00:01:20] Speaker B: Good.
Today's episode is going to have a little bit of an academic theme.
Test taking is the the subject of our conversation. I think we're specifically speaking towards 28s right now. I think it's probably a little bit early for 29s, but I want to talk a minute about test taking and some strategies there specifically targeted towards the high academic folks out there. So Coach Glass, what do you got on this?
[00:01:49] Speaker E: I think in the pay attention to the higher academic world and just the colleges in general, that a good portion of the high academic schools are either going back to mandatory testing with the SAT ACT or they're they're still mulling around kicking around the idea of going back from being test optional to test mandatory for the SAT act.
So it's something that should be on your radar, especially if you are interested in the high academic world, that with these discussions happening, some of them have already announced, you know, in the for the, you know, fall of 20, 27 and forward, it's going to be test mandatory or fall of 28, whatever it is, that if that's what you're kind of aiming for from an academic standpoint, you might want to try to get an SAT ACT on the books this school year, preferably this half of the school year.
October, November, December, maybe January somewhere in there.
Look at the test dates, get in tech, the SAT act, either or both and see where you're at. See where your grades, see what your scores look like and then see where that puts you in the realm of that world for a recruitment standpoint. And is that going to be good enough because it allows you to be able to then prep, retake the test, try to get better grades or you know, hey, maybe you didn't do well on the sat. You take the ACT and you did better there. Like maybe focus your efforts there or vice versa. You know, you took the asd, it wasn't good, you took the ast, it was better. Maybe you focus your efforts there but give yourself a baseline for, for what you have moving forward so that you have an idea of where you slot in and what you have to do in order to increase your scores if need be.
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[00:04:41] Speaker B: yeah, I just think it makes a ton of sense in today's world, especially when you have some of the higher academic schools trying to operate a touch earlier in the process. Now that being able to get that, that score on the board early gives them an idea where you're at and then you know, if you're somebody who's going to be a little bit later in the cycle, you I guess, kind of more typical in the cycle like spring, summer of your of this upcoming year in 2027, that you've got a score and it can really inform what type of schools you target.
And it also gives those coaches a really good understanding of either hey, that kid's going to be able to get in or I need you to retake.
So that conversation is a little bit more clean cut as opposed to waiting until, you know, taking it in June and then you don't get a response back until early July.
Just slows down the process a little bit and if you need to retake, then it's going to slow it down even more. And you know, with the amount of kids and how competitive things are, you want to give yourself as much of a leg up as you can.
And honestly, like it takes these just tests take practice. I mean there's some kids you can go sit down and just knock it out, go get your 1450 and you know you're gonna have a, you're gonna have a lot of doors open for you. There's a lot of guys that they'll go take that first test and not really prepared for it, which is fine. And you know, they'll get a 1300 say and then they know where they stand to your point, they can put a little bit of time and effort into those particular sections, focus on, you know, some test taking strategies and you know, next thing you know, they're up in that 1400 range. And that can open up a whole nother, whole nother group of doors from an academic perspective. So I think it makes a ton of sense for a lot of different reasons.
And it can only be beneficial and especially for student athletes that have aspirations of, you know, competing at high academic schools. Right. Obviously the Ivy League, the Patriot League, you know, the other handful of really good academic division one schools that are, that the test scores are going to be very important.
And then a large group of the high academic division threes, your NESCACs and UAAs and centennials and you know, your Hopkins is the world and stuff like that that are, you know, that's going to be a big piece of their admissions puzzle. So getting ahead of it, I think makes a ton of sense for a bunch of reasons.
[00:07:07] Speaker E: Yeah. And I think that, you know, you want to keep your ear to the ground on what schools may or may not be doing it. Most of them are posting on their website, but you know, you don't want to look at and be like, oh well, this school is test optional. You don't take the test. But they've announced that they're going to be test mandatory next year and you don't have a test score that's competitive enough come April or June or July of next year. And you're scrambling trying to figure out when you can take a test to try to be admissible at said school, which could then further delay you even being admitted into that school. So do your research. Know what schools are, you know, have flipped back into test mandatory who may never have left test mandatory when they're thinking or when they might be going back to test mandatory so that you have an idea and you can get that stuff on the books and squared away.
[00:08:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it can only help, right? Like, even if it's a school that's not test mandatory right now, and there are some, there's still some very good academic schools that, I mean, there's a couple Ivy League schools that recently were test optional.
It can only help you.
You know, knocking down a 1450 is only going to help your case.
You know, whether it be with admissions. It could be. There could be a financial aid or I should say a merit based component to it.
You know, that, you know, you go and knock down a really good score. Even if it's not test mandatory school, that could unlock some money that wouldn't have been there if you hadn't tested. So get at it a little bit early, get that baseline, figure out what you need to improve on and go from there.
Anything else?
[00:08:48] Speaker E: No, sir.
[00:08:48] Speaker B: All right, well, thank you for listening, everybody. Tune in next week, we'll talk to you then. Thank you.
[00:08:55] Speaker C: Thank you for listening this week. If you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and smash that like button for us. Check us out on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, as well as Spotify. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram @EMD Baseball.
If you want to find out what me and Keith do to help families and players navigate the recruiting process, go ahead and check us out on emdbaseball.com take a few minutes to check out our new online academy. I promise you'll get some good information out of that. Thanks again for listening. Check in with you next week.
