WIN Reality, the virtual reality training and assessment platform for athletes, announced today the launch of their latest in-game coaching product, WIN Elite. This new offering is designed to provide direct, personalized coaching and analysis for young baseball and softball players to improve their hitting performance in real-time in an immersive VR environment.
WIN Elite is centered around individualized 1:1 coaching from a core group of coaching professionals who lead hitting lessons with athletes in real time. The combination of coaching with VR provides game speed repetitions with real time metrics. The program includes working through fundamental drills, hitting scenarios, and teaching a winner's mentality, all designed to improve performance at the plate. With Elite, athletes will experience coaching that is normally only accessible to elite athletes and teams. Scheduling is flexible and athletes can join the platform from anywhere with a wifi connection, making WIN Elite a convenient training option for both players and parents.
"There's no substitute for a coach, but not everyone has the time and resources for in person, 1:1 instruction on top of the rigors of school, practice, and games," says Ben Schragger, Director of Customer Experience at WIN Reality. "With WIN Elite, young players can unlock the benefits of a private hitting coach, including custom development plans, from the comfort of their own home."
Beyond the advantages of a VR environment, WIN Elite leverages accountability between the players and the coaches in order to help develop athletes who are just getting started in sports all the way through elite high school players preparing for their transition to college. That means personal training plans with clear expectations of completion coupled with on-demand text messages directly between coaches and players. It also means access to community events periodically that feature Q&As with college athletes, interactive training livestreams with other coaches, and info sessions on college recruiting and other off-the-field topics.
"We launched WIN Reality because we knew that a VR environment can help more players hone their performance," said Chris O'Dowd, Founder and CEO of WIN Reality and former pro baseball player. "But that's no substitute for the value of a personal coach guiding a player's growth in the game. By bringing together the best of technology with the power of individual attention and instruction, we know that our young players can make the most of their growth in the sport."
"Being able to throw the headset on, take swings, and receive instantaneous feedback about how you're performing, you can't rival that", said Chris Love, WIN Elite Parent. "The ability for Winter, my son, to train virtually with his WIN Elite coach, who played high-level baseball, is as good or better than any in person coach Winter has had up until this point."
WIN Reality is hosted on the Meta Quest headset and the platform is available at both winreality.com as well as the Meta Quest store. WIN Elite is $299 for a three-month subscription in addition to the basic pricing for WIN Reality at $29/month. Introductory pricing offers are currently available for new users.
About WIN Reality
WIN Reality's virtual reality -based training tool is used by thousands of youth players and hundreds of professional and collegiate baseball athletes, including most Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises and more than 100 NCAA teams. Delivered through the Meta Quest headset, the company's software solution allows baseball and softball players to step into a virtual ballpark and take game-speed pitches that move as they would in a live environment. With a library of over 7,000 real-life pitchers and nearly two million pitches, users can participate in a near-infinite number of hitting drills and pitching simulations with real-time data-driven insights to improve pitch-recognition abilities and swing attributes.
MLB players who used WIN as a game-prep tool exhibited 19% higher batting averages, 12% higher on-base percentages, and an 18% better plate-discipline ratio, according to a joint WIN-MLB study. Within the last year, players have faced nearly 40 million pitches on the WIN platform.