Warrior Academy moves into new digs

“For me, it would be like Barry Bonds walking in for those girls,” Warrior Academy coach Mickey McDonald said. “They look up to her ... and she deserves it. She’s done some pretty impressive things.”

The next time Grant returns home, she will be visiting Warrior Academy at its new facility. Founder Ray McDonald closed the doors on the small setup on South Amphlett on April 30, moving to a more spacious location down the road at 153 North Amphlett Blvd.

The club was founded in 2014 by Ray McDonald, a 1982 Serra graduate and high school teammate of Barry Bonds. The club’s original name was the West Bay Warriors, with a classic green-and-gold color scheme. While the club now remains under the Warrior Academy umbrella — which initially saw the color scheme and design change to a hyper-modern red-and-black — McDonald has brought back the original green-and-gold logo.

That original logo is now on display on a new marquee at the North Amphlett location, whereas the old location didn’t have a sign at all.

“We didn’t have a sign outside before,” Ray McDonald said. “We were just little Rocky Balboa workout gym with two cages.”

The new facility is four times the size of its predecessor, now approximately 8,000 square feet. There are four batting cages, a weight room, and a formal office space complete with a boardroom table and big screen TV, so the McDonalds can watch Grant and her former Warrior teammate, University of Nebraska junior Olivia DiNardo, as they open NCAA Super Regional this weekend.

One of the most modern additions to the new facility is the HitTrax technology, an analytics processor that tracks every swing each of the current 150-plus Warrior players take in the batting cages. The processor tracks the projected outcome of every swing with video-game like animation displayed on big screen TVs next to the cages, that analyze a swing for a hit or an out, what kind of hit, line drive percentage, exit velocity, and a slew of other advanced metrics. Hitting sessions can be viewed on the big screens, showing the players’ avatars taking at-bats at a video-game version of Oracle Park, but with the distance to the center field wall at 226 feet to be representative of true softball dimensions.

“It’s improved the performance,” Ray McDonald said. “They understand what they’re trying to do, what they’re accomplishing. ‘Hey, this isn’t good enough, you aren’t hitting the ball hard enough, often enough. You’ve got to hit it harder more often.’ And then all of a sudden their percentage goes up because they’re hitting the ball harder more often. We just track it every day. And we can pull up their history and see their improvement.”

The McDonalds have quite a track record of success. In addition to Ray McDonald’s son Mickey McDonald — who is also in his second year coaching the varsity baseball team at Serra — his sister, Ray’s daughter, Kelly McDonald, is also on the coaching staff at Warrior Academy, along with Harry Mullins, a strength and conditioning coach who goes back with Ray McDonald to their days coaching the Cal Nuggets.

When the club was founded in 2014, there was just one team of 13-year-olds, including Holly Fletcher (Aragon, University of South Dakota) and Brianna Santos (Hillsdale, Binghamton and University of Colorado Colorado Springs). The next year, the Warriors added 12- and 14-year-old teams, with Grant and DiNardo coming aboard. It was not long after that Grant became the first Warriors player to commit to college, verbally committing to UCLA when she was 12.

Grant and DiNardo played on the 14s team as 12-year-olds, which has served as a motivating principal for Warrior Academy beyond their foundational teaching of proper hitting, throwing and running mechanics.

“We’re going to push them,” Ray McDonald said. “If we feel like they’re strong, and they have a big ability, we’re going to move them up. Nobody is going to dominate at any age. If they’re going to dominate, we’re moving them up, and that’s going to help their growth as an athlete and handle the situation of older kids.

“When they go to college at 18, they’ve got to deal with 22-year-olds,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to play with kids four years ahead of you. That’s part of the preparation to get them to a high level, here, to college. They’ve got to prepare to play with kids stronger, learn how to communicate with older kids. We do a lot of loud talking in here for using your voice on the field, and leadership. We try to raise some really strong women leaders and tell them they can accomplish anything.”

Boys and baseball players also train at Warrior Academy, where Ray McDonald said Warrior Baseball is officially coming in the fall following the current summer softball season.

The Warrior Academy has now sent 69 players to collegiate softball programs, and more are on the way. St. Francis senior Maya Yumiba is one of the group from the class of 2025 who has committed to play in college, as she will move onto the Division I program at Army West Point.

“I love it,” Yumiba said of Warrior Academy. “Ray is the first coach that ever believed in me ... and wanted to put in as much work as I did.”

During its first season under the Warrior Academy name in 2021, the 16-and-under team won the national championship at the USA Softball Alliance Fastpitch Championship Series 16U Gold tournament in Oklahoma City. The team was famously anchored by Grant at shortstop and DiNardo catching, but also featured young backup catcher Avery Motroni.

Now a senior at Capuchino, Motroni is the only player still in high school from that 2021 national championship team.

“She is the only remaining player in our organization that won a national championship,” Ray McDonald said. “She was a DH on that team, and she caught a little bit when I’d give DiNardo a little rest. But DiNardo was the MVP of that team.”

While Warrior Academy actively pushes players to excel, such as DiNardo and her current .385 batting average at Nebraska, Ray McDonald said the club’s underlying principal is to strengthen and improve core fundamentals, and have fun doing it.

“A lot of humans throw messed up ... so we teach throwing mechanics, running mechanics, all that kind of stuff is included,” Ray McDonald said. “And then the hitting. It’s kind of like training them how to get your body together, and do everything properly. That’s what we’re kind of collectively trying to accomplish.”