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06/07/2017 08:30 AMBrett Bradanini grew up around baseball, playing in his youth and during high school. Now, he wants to share the family feel of sports teams and help prepare kids for life after sports.
“My father played at UConn and Quinnipiac, and my brother Jeff played at Sacred Heart, so it was kind of in the blood,” Brett says.
Growing up in a baseball family was competitive, Brett says. After finishing practices on Bailey Road Field, he would stay with his father and continue hitting balls.
He recalled one instance where his coach told his father he was going to burn Brett out if they kept doing that.
“We would fake leaving, go out, and then come back,” Brett says.
He says he was fortunate to be able to play at Quinnipiac University, where he was a walk-on player on the team. However, he says he wasn’t good enough to get further than he got.
“I got where I got because I worked hard, and I was a grinder,” says Brett.
While he was at Quinnipiac, he earned a B.S. in marketing and an MBA. He says he was content playing in college, and wanted to leverage what he learned into something like what he does now.
Brett owns The Diamond Zone in North Haven. While known for baseball and softball training, the facility has space for other athletic programs such as football, soccer, and even cheerleading.
Brett says that a unique aspect about the Diamond Zone is that it has an in-house college advisor.
“We also focus with the endgame in mind, where we have an in-house college advisor who helps find our kids a quality college fit based on their social goals, cultural goals, geographic goals, academic goals, athletic goals, and financial goals,” Brett says.
Brett says he lives by the phrase “you act like a soldier to make it hard to spot the general,” meaning that he’ll do whatever needs to be done at his business. He’s typically an instructor, and he also manages the facility.
A common misconception Brett thinks people have in sports is that they want to raise their child to be the next superstar. He says he feels some people fail to understand that no matter how good an individual is at sports, eventually the locker room will close, and those people should have a career lined up for after their time in sports is over.
“The reason we do that is because we feel that a lot of athletes tend to focus their college search around the sport, and the sport should be just a value add to your college experience because at the end of the day, your academics are important,” Brett says.
Personally, Brett feels good when he receives positive feedback, and says Memorial Day weekend was awesome.
“I got a couple texts from parents gushing about their kid’s performance,” Brett says, “That feels good that what we’re doing in terms of our process is working, and it means we’re doing something right.”
One aspect in which Brett takes particular pride is taking personal interest in the kids, often through fun team events.
“For example, our fall teams, they all go to Lake Compounce for Fright Night,” Brett says, “A couple of the coaches, including myself, get a little frightened in some of the things we do, whether it’s the rides; they’ve seen me fall on my butt a few times in the little corn maze thing.”
Another thing they do is rake leaves for veterans because, Brett says, he believes in the close-knit, family atmosphere that such an event creates.
“It allows us to develop trust amongst one another, where there isn’t that hierarchical structure,” Brett says. “That’s not needed.”
Brett says that coming from a baseball family, what he does allows him to bond more with his family as well, whether it’s his brother or his father.
“It’s awesome that I’m spend more quality time with them with something that we grew up enjoying so much, and not many can say they do that in their typical nine-to-five job,” Brett says.