Coaches

Solid Foundation Baseball School, the owner of S.W.A.T. Elite Baseball, has been conducting baseball lessons since 1997. S.F.B.S. was started by owner Mike Kingery. Mike played professional baseball for 17 years, signing right out of high school in August of 1979 with the Kansas City Royals. Mike had the privilege of playing with 6 Major League teams. He started out with the Kansas City Royals and then went on to play with the Seattle Mariners, San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, Colorado Rockies and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Mike played with 5 current Hall of Famers: George Brett, the late Gary Carter, Ricky Henderson, Dennis Eckersley, and Goose Gossage. There will be more of Mike’s Major League teammates in Cooperstown in the future with the likes of Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson, and possibly Omar Visquel, Edgar Martinez, and Harold Baines. Mike learned much while playing with these and other great players. He also gleaned much knowledge and wisdom by listening to his managers and coaches, and also by asking questions. He is excited to pass this information on to his S.W.A.T. team players. The demand for instruction through S.F.B.S. has grown to such a level that Mike has trained instructors to teach the S.F.B.S. technique. Some of these instructors will be coaching for your son’s S.W.A.T. team. With a likeminded approach to our instruction, your son will be trained consistently through his years with the S.W.A.T. teams. This is one of the most important parts of the program. Hitting, pitching, fielding and throwing instruction will be consistent from one coach to the next. One instructor does not teach one type of hitting while the other teaches another. This consistency allows our athletes not to have to relearn or “start over again” as they progress up in age. Our goal is to give you the tools to not only be successful at the level you are at but at the next level that you aspire to get to. S.F.B.S. philosophy was born out of Major League experience, Major League training, and great coaches from Atwater (Mike’s hometown) and around the country. At S.F.B.S. we know that every student is unique and needs to be treated as such. There is no one technique that will work for every student. We evaluate each student and from that evaluation, we determine what will work best for that individual student. There is no cloning at S.F.B.S. Mike learned through his Major League experience that a player should do his baseball skills fundamentally sound within the individuality of the player. There are skills in baseball technique which are called the absolutes and other skills that are preferences. S.F.B.S. teaches the absolutes as absolutes and the preferences as preferences. We believe this is the type of training that is best for the player to become the best player they can be. Click here to see S.F.B.S. Testimonies
      It is currently popular to put a label on the basic philosophy of baseball instructors. The two popular divisions of hitting are the rotational hitting philosophy and the linear (weight shift) hitting philosophy. We believe the truth is that the large majority of Major League hitters do both. A hitter should have a movement toward the pitcher (linear weight-transfer/shift) and you need to have proper rotation. Some hitters may have a little more weight shift than others and some may be more rotational than others, but the hitter needs to do both. This is just one example of our coaching philosophy.