On five acres of land off Old Pasco Rd., Ryan Pryor has built a ranch devoted to teaching America’s pastime.
Pryor’s Rockstar Baseball Ranch (RBR) has everything from hitting stables with seven batting cages to five bullpens for pitchers, as well as a drill field, batting tees, outfield ranges, long toss throwing lanes and a fitness corral. There’s even a pond on the property for some occasional fishing.
On Sept. 9, RBR held a grand opening event, as the ping of bat to ball rang out through the country air, and Pryor gave a glimpse into the kind of instruction prospective baseball members would receive.
“The grand opening went great,’’ Pryor says. “We got a great response from the parents, we were able to take them through the training zones; we showed them a lot of drills they hadn’t seen before.”
Those drills, Pryor says, have proven results. Although RBR is a membership facility (starting at $49 a month), it is currently offering area baseball teams (travel, recreation, softball) a chance to try it out with free hitting practice in September through Oct. 31.
Results Driven Coaching
Pryor is convinced players and coaches will see results quickly.
A former high school standout in Georgia and a college player at Fresno State (CA), he is applying a lifetime of baseball expertise to local baseball players of all shapes and sizes — as well as all talent levels.
He is known locally after coaching in the Wesley Chapel and New Tampa area for years, starting out as a softball assistant at Paul R. Wharton High in New Tampa and at Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH), before then-Wiregrass baseball coach Jeff Swymer asked Pryor to join the baseball staff. With the Bulls, Swymer and Pryor had great success, coming up a game short of the state finals in 2013. In 2014, Swymer was hired at Bishop McLaughlin High in Spring Hill, and Pryor decided to follow him. In 2015, the Hurricanes made it to the Class 3A State Semifinals.
Pryor resigned after last season to more effectively launch his RBR. What began as a baseball training business out of his garage in 2009 has grown into a large undertaking with lots of potential. “If I could train players in a 10×10 garage, imagine what I could do on five acres,’’ he says.
The Wesley Chapel resident is hoping RBR becomes a resource for local players, parents and coaches. He sees himself as a local farm system for local leagues and high schools, giving baseball players the extra training they need.
“What we’re trying to do is be a support to coaches, parents and the players so everyone has a better baseball experience all around,” Pryor says.
In fact, he adds that he hopes to even finalize a program for adults who want to be better coaches by offering a certification course, so they can also help develop better baseball players.
The focus, right now, remains on the kids. “We prepare kids for high school, that’s kind of where we are today,’’ Pryor says.
Pryor likes to think he can turn any player into a baseball rockstar, and he uses a quick, fun and strenuous approach to smooth out a player’s rough edges.
“The big thing that the parents said at the grand opening is that we had the ability to keep the players’ attention,’’ Pryor says. “That’s important.”
The last three years, Wesley Chapel resident Max Ferrera has been taking his son Mitchell, a freshman at WRH, all the way to Bishop McLaughlin to train with Coach Pryor. The 45-minute trip each way was been worth it, Ferrera says.
“He runs the best practices I’ve ever seen,’’ says Ferrera, a former high school football coach in Hillsborough County. “For me, I looked at a lot of other places, did a lot of research, went and watched, and thought it was more people trying to recruit the best 9-12 players they could find for individual development. With Ryan, every kid was given the opportunity to develop.”
Pryor says he has hundreds of kids he has helped make high school teams, and some of them have gone on to play baseball in college.
He prides himself on fixing things in someone’s swing or pitching delivery that neither they nor their parents and coaches can see. He employs video analysis and an intricate step-by-step method of instruction. At his RBR grand opening, Pryor says he gave one 20-minute demonstration to a coach showing him how to fix a player’s swing — starting from the end of it and working backwards — and that the coach has used that lesson and has already seen a difference in his team’s results.
Pryor is all about the big picture, but not before assembling all the little pieces of it together in the right sequence.
“We like to break everything down into smaller pieces,’’ he says. “It’s sort of like baking a cake.’’
The Rockstar Baseball Ranch (8931 Elkmont Ln.) has a number of specials — from Fundamental Fridays (an 8-week course on baseball fundamentals beginning Sept. 30) to a Halloween Whiffle Ball tournament fund raiser for cancer on Oct. 30. For more info, call 992-1030 or visit RockstarBaseballRanch.com.
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