Kendra Bolling

After years of coaching baseball and developing a tee that would better emphasize his coaching style, Ron Pierce finally received his patent Jan. 21 for his multi-tee from the United State Patent and Trademark Office.

Pierce, who is the owner of Troy Baseball, a training facility created to help young people improve their baseball and softball skills, developed the multi-tee, which is a double-tee design that allows for the immediate evaluation of a batter’s swing, and enables the batter to make necessary corrections.

Getting the patent was a long process for Pierce, who filed for a provisional patent sometime in October 2005.

According to Pierce, the provisional patent offered protection of his invention until the final product was ready and an official patent was issued.

“I filed for a patent on May 22, 2006, and we received the patent on Jan. 21,2009,” Pierce said.

For Pierce getting the patent was the missing piece of the puzzle related to his invention.

“I can honestly say it has been a challenge to bring this idea to fruition,” Pierce said.

“Since the inception of this unique swing trainer, I knew that it could provide and effective means to train young ballplayers in a manner that was not being used elsewhere,” Pierce said.

“The Multi-Tee is the result of years of experimenting wit a wood-and-PVC pipe prototype that I eventually had manufactured to sell to a larger market.”

“We’ve been selling them since December 2006,” Pierce said. “We sell them across the country, around here and in sports catalogs.”

Specifically, the Multi-Tee is available at JAB’s Sporting Goods in Troy, MAC Sporting Goods in Montgomery and C&M Sporting Goods in Dothan.

According to Pierce, he began coming up with the multi-tee in 2005, after conducting lessons and using other tees.

“I started developing it by experimenting with a wooden tees,” Pierce said.

“Previously, most batting tees have used only one upright tee – some of which could be moved to different locations on the plate.”

“The Multi-Tee is a result of years of experimenting with a wood-and-PVC-pipe prototype that I eventually had manufactured to see to a larger market,” Pierce said.

Pierce, who has worked with children for years and has gone through a lot of different tees, said that most tees require a ball to be in a certain place that isn’t always accurate for the type of teaching he uses.

Pierce’s multi-tee is fully adjustable, has a 360-degree swing arm and full tee extensions and can be used for right- or left-handed batters.

According to Pierce, the majority of amateur baseball and softball players have not been taught the correct position of ball and bat contact for pitches in the three standard hitting zones, which are inside, middle and outside.

“Ninety percent don’t understand the correct way,” Pierce said.

The multi-tee is designed to create dozens of hitting scenarios and to show batters the proper way to swing.

“It revolves 360-degrees and people don’t have to guess where to hit on any kind of pitch,” Pierce said.

Pierce uses the tee in all of his lessons and all camps, which he coaches all year long.

“We usually have about 50 per month, and 20 or so during the off season,” Pierce said.

Pierce said a lot of coaches are catching on to the tee, and he even had a lady from New York call to say how much she liked it.