The first time Southern Miss head coach Scott Berry laid eyes on slugger Slade Wilks was when he was a high school freshman hitting home runs out of Pete Taylor Park.
It was the first day of Southern Miss’ annual baseball camp, Hitting Under the Lights. Wilks hit a home run that went through the trees and into the Right Field Roost. It was the first of many during the duration of the camp.
“I knew I hit it really well,” said Wilks, remembering hitting his first home run at Pete Taylor Park. “I kind of sat there and watched. I didn’t know if I was supposed to watch or not.”
Wilks had not attended any showcases, much less hit a home run inside a college stadium. It was also the first season Wilks devoted himself to baseball, because while he had always known that he had a talent for baseball, his initial love was football. But his football career was derailed after suffering season-ending knee injuries for three straight years, with the final coming at the end of his freshman season.
“I was a three-sport athlete,” Wilks said. “My freshman year, I was playing football, basketball and baseball. I tore my ACL for the third straight year. I tore it in football every year. Football was my love, but I was better at baseball.
“I’d get hurt in football every year. I’d go do rehab really hard. Come back just in time for baseball season, play all summer, then get hurt again. It kept happening over and over.”
Berry had heard of Wilks before the camp but was in disbelief when he first witnessed him in action. By the end of the camp, Wilks was offered a scholarship.
“He was just a young man that was physical for his age but had just incredible power for that age,” Berry said. “(He) was a ninth grader that came in here and was hitting balls where a lot of our guys as college players didn’t hit.
“You could tell he had a special tool.”
The folklore of Wilks’ monster home run-hitting ability began to travel. Travis Creel, who was an assistant coach at Louisiana Tech for most of Wilks’ high school career, had heard of his natural power and still remembers the first time he watched him hit.
“The first time I saw him, he was in Atlanta, and he hit a ball like 460 (feet) or something like that with a wood bat when he was like 16 years old,” Creel said. “There were definitely some legends going around about him.”
Wilks’ hitting gained the attention of Major League Baseball scouts by his senior year. Fortunately for Southern Miss, Wilks’ senior year was the 2020 COVID-19 shortened season. As a result, MLB shortened its draft from 40 rounds to five, which ensured his arrival to Southern Miss’ campus.
“There were definitely some teams that were coming to watch me play in high school,” Wilks said. “I felt like I was ready, but obviously, it didn’t work out. Looking back now, I’m grateful that I’ve been able to come here.
“Southern Miss was definitely the top choice. Being from Columbia, I live 30 or 40 minutes from here. I wanted to be here, and they wanted me, so it was mutual.”
Initially, Wilks' college career did not live up to the high expectations, but during his sophomore year, he finished the season hitting .288, driving in 37 runs and hitting 10 home runs. Still, Wilks left with more to be desired and went into the summer planning to change his swing.
During the 2022 season, Wilks suffered a shoulder injury after running into UAB’s outfield wall. At the time, it seemed to be a simple shoulder strain, as Wilks played through it until the end of the season. By the end of July, Wilks began to feel horrific pain, and after receiving an MRI, he learned that he had torn his labrum in his right shoulder. Despite the bad news, it worked in Wilks’ favor to change his swing.
Instead of having to mentally change his swing, Wilks approached it by almost entirely relearning how to swing.
“It was stressful,” Wilks said. “I had worked over the summer and was really just focusing on shortening my swing down. Once I got hurt, I wouldn’t say I started my swing from the ground up, but I knew exactly what I wanted my swing to be like. It’s easy to start fresh.”
Wilks’ problem was that his swing would get too uphill when facing elevated fastballs.
“Elevated fastballs were his kryptonite,” Creel said. “These days, with analytics and technology, there are so many guys throwing up in the zone more. They throw that spinny fastball up in the zone, and it’s really hard for an uphill l swing to get to.”
Wilks managed to start swinging a bat sooner than he could throw a baseball. He corrected his swing by watching video, studying his swing in the mirror to see what his barrel was doing and progressively working by taking swings, starting with 30% strength off a tee. At the same time, his injury recovery prevented him from reverting back to his old swing and forced him to swing on a level plane.
“It’s an injury that doesn’t allow you to have freedom with other parts of your body,” Berry said. “It’s hard to go 40% (strength) with some kind of a launch angle. You don’t want to come off that plane with that labrum. You’ve got to stay down through it because you don’t want it messing up. It retaught him his swing plane.”
By leveling his swing, Wilks cut down on pop-ups and swing-and-miss strikeouts.
“When you have that launch angle swing, your contact point is about 12 inches,” Berry said. “But with a flat plane swing, all of a sudden, your contact point is 18 inches.”
Wilks’s hitting numbers have skyrocketed during the 2023 season as he currently holds a .318 average, driven in 52 runs, belted 11 doubles and two triples and hit 18 home runs, which puts him five away from tying the program’s single-season record.
“People have told me (about the record), but I haven’t really talked about it or really thought about it,” Wilks said. “I’m just trying to go out and be consistent every day, get my work in the cages.”
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