Spring is still quite a ways off, but the Wallace Community College Selma Patriots have been getting a jump start on preparing for the upcoming season.

Frank Elliott, head baseball coach of Wallace Community College, said the Patriots began workouts and some condition back in August and wrapped up about a week ago.

He said the Patriots have been doing some conditioning workouts and training that are used by some of Major League Baseball’s best.

“What I did was I got several different workouts from Justin Verlander’s workout, to Dustin Pedroia’s workout, to Johan Santana’s … and presented it to my guys,” Elliott said. “Then I went and got a winter workout that was recommended for high schools and everything by Skip Berkman, who used to be the LSU head coach. They also have documentation that comes with it where kids can track what they do daily. We’re trying to get some motivation to the guys and let them pick something that they can do between now and the time they come back.”

Elliott said workouts by pro players emphasize explosiveness that helps a great deal on the diamond.

“A lot of these pro guys are using medicine balls within their workouts. Pedroia, for example, uses the medicine ball to help improve with explosive type techniques whenever your doing the workouts,” Elliott said. “Baseball, when you swing the bat, when you run, you’ve got to have some explosion.”

Along with workouts, Elliott said the Patriots have gotten a look at all of their players through weekend scrimmages that included a pair of local squads among others.

“We scrimmaged a lot of weekends when we first got started. We scrimmaged some travel teams, some junior colleges, Selma University, against Concordia,” Elliott said. “We really didn’t keep score, I just wanted to watch how my guys performed, and we played everybody throughout the fall. And that was the goal was to give everybody the opportunity and let them see for themselves who stacks up, who’s first string, who’s second string.”

Elliott said the scrimmages have highlighted a need to continue improving pitching.

“We’re going to have to do a little bit better pitching wise. We had one of our better pitchers, Cody Carroll, is down for the rest of the year, so that’s going to be a bummer there,” Elliott said. “Pitching, we’ve got to find a replacement there and see who’s going to step up and take the bull by the horns so to speak.”

As for hitting, Elliott said the Patriots have made some adjustments and have made great strides in the batting cages.

“Hitting wise, we started off a little slow, but changed up the hitting routines a little bit to add more repetitions. We went from swinging about 50 to 60 times to swinging 150 times at practice,” Elliott said. “Really, just upping the work in practice and coaching more, too. By the end of the fall, the hitting had really picked up.”