Hellerball” is a common phrase players and fans use when Rick Heller is in charge of their baseball program.
Given to him by Brett Douglas during his Northern Iowa coaching days, the term can have multiple meanings depending on who you ask.
What most people think of when they hear Hellerball is seeing a baseball team that drops sacrifice bunts, steals bases, and does all of the dirty work to win a game. But when asking Heller himself, he has a much different definition in mind.
“What Hellerball means to me is not like bunting or short game or any of that,” Heller said. “It’s about how hard we play and just finding a way to get it done. It’s never giving up and comebacks late in the game. Just basically playing the game as hard as you can and not focusing so much on the results as to how you handle yourself.”
Since his introduction to the Iowa baseball program in 2014, Heller has used this same mentality to put Iowa in the upper echelon of the conference when it comes to offensive productivity.
Year in and year out, Iowa finds a way to be productive at the plate regardless of how much talent they have.
Heller credits this to a hitting philosophy he instills into his players as soon as they step on campus.
“I think we have a really good plan,” Heller said. “Our hitting beliefs lead to a lot of success. I think the things we focus on and believe are important to be a good offensive team start with a philosophy that it is an offense, a team offense. It’s not an individual offense.”
This philosophy includes every facet you can think of when it comes to hitting the baseball. From pitch recognition to batter vision, Heller and his coaching staff teach Iowa hitters to own the strike zone and to make high-quality swing decisions every at-bat.
To train their hitters to recognize the strike zone, Heller uses vision testing to help players see what pitches they can hit at a high percentage.
“We do high-level vision training with vision testing to improve depth perception,” Heller said. “We have had so many kids come in that didn’t even know they had a deficit in some area and were able to clean that up. You see them turn into a guy that was maybe a chase guy coming into a non-chase guy with an over .400 on-base percentage.”
Outside of being able to control the strike zone and produce quality at-bats, Heller asks his batters to do damage with every swing they take. Emphasizing doubles, Heller wants his batters to be good at every aspect of hitting.
“In the midwest, during the spring, the weather dictates so much of the offense,” Heller said. “It’s always been my belief that where we live and where we coach, we better be really good at everything. I mean short game, running game, going the other way, and pulling when you need to. If you bank on having the three-run homer all the time it’s not going to happen all the time.”