DURHAM, North Carolina – USA Baseball announced Wednesday the release of its Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) Plan for baseball in the United States. Supported by Major League Baseball (MLB), LTAD provides a multi-stage development pathway for an individual’s lifetime experience in the sport, with the ultimate goals of increasing participation, aiding performance and enhancing enjoyment of baseball.
The LTAD Plan is the result of evidence-based insights from a group of leading sports scientists, as well as input from an interdisciplinary leadership group comprised of medical safety industry experts, MLB league and club executives, and an advisory group comprised of leaders from across the amateur baseball landscape.
“In 2014, USA Baseball conducted a multi-dimensional study of the amateur market and identified several challenges facing the amateur game, including a lack of coach education, a lack of structured coaching throughout a player’s childhood and adolescence, and the rising cost of participation,” said Rick Riccobono, USA Baseball’s director of development. “Other challenges include early specialization in a single sport, year-round play, and the disproportionate relationship between development and competition. This data served as the springboard for the LTAD process.”
DLTA aims to provide solutions to the entire baseball community, namely:
• Improve the experience of all participants within the sport
• Promote age-appropriate physical literacy and psychosocial development
• Highlight best practices in player health and safety, including deferring single-sport specialization
• Encourage age-appropriate progression of skill development
• Extend individual engagement through improved infrastructure
• Promote lifelong engagement through mentoring and recreational play
LTAD recognizes the need to involve all athletes in the development pathway and is comprised of a seven-stage framework that complements each other. An athlete may enter the pathway at any point in their progression. Each stage of LTAD is categorized by chronological age group; however, LTAD emphasizes the need to assess each athlete’s skills to determine their pathway needs. The stage parameters set out in LTAD are intended to serve as general guidelines rather than categorical constraints and may vary depending on the physical and emotional maturation of each athlete.
This framework also allows athletes to begin an “advanced pathway” within the “Development” stage for youth aged 14 to 16. Advanced athletes are those who demonstrate a high level of ability in the sport at their age. The “advanced pathway” is a development pathway that allows athletes to devote more time and energy to training and competition to progress to a higher level in the game.
“On behalf of the Task Force, we feel privileged to have had the opportunity to collaborate with leaders from across amateur baseball to provide the scientific content for this important project,” said Joseph Myers, Ph.D., ATC, director of baseball performance science for the Tampa Bay Rays and chair of the LTAD Task Force. “This collaboration has resulted in a program that provides players, coaches, parents and fans with a positive and rewarding experience where talent can be maximized, healthy fitness levels can be achieved and, ultimately, baseball can be enjoyed throughout their lives.”
The LTAD is available at USABLTAD.com or by accessing the USA Baseball Online Education Center at USABaseball.Education.
