Stone City FastPitch

Stone City FastPitch has been developing elite softball players in the Minooka area since 1978. Founded by Bob Martin and Ed Serdar, the program has won multiple national championships, produced Olympian Dani Tyler, and has long been one of Illinois' premier competitive travel softball organizations. Stone City stresses Discipline, Respect, Integrity, Veracity, and Education — DRIVE — for young women on and off the field.

“Not for profit? Not so sure. For the money you spend it’s not worth it. Horrible winter training and facilities. One uniform in the fall and one in the spring. Lots of weekends with no tournaments. ”

“Daughter played there until this last season. Went through a complete overhaul of the old board and leadership. Had very high hopes things would go in the right direction. Unfortunately, new leadership seems to have thrown in the towel and is just operating for fun because they can. We were promised a college-exposure / high-level schedule this year and we did not get that. The year was wasted for a talented group and all went their separate ways after the season. The fields are great, so younger girls really get that benefit. However older girls plying tournaments as their main schedule, do not. The winter training facility is an absolute embarrassment and the board is unwilling to make any real positive changes. If your daughter wants to play college ball, this is not the place. If they are just having fun, it’ll do. Be wary of the people in charge though. They don’t have a ton of skin in the game but live total control. ”

“Lots of potential, fields are great and well taken care of. You don’t have to fundraise but do have to do volunteer hours. They do corn fest and all money goes to help the teams play tournaments. So huge perk but.. Dislikes: Winter training location is small. Training was not bad but if the location was bigger I think the trainer could have done more with the girls. For younger teams I think the focus should be fundamentals. Coaching: It had ups and downs but if you are going to coach you definitely need patience’s for girls. I know it’s hard to find coaches so I do understand these are parents mostly running the teams- and yes definitely some teams had daddy ball going on to a point. Developing players me personally I didn’t see much of that from the coaching side, they just favored the better players at time instead of working with some, so some did fall to the side. ”