In The Zone Baseball & Softball Academy, Mount Olive Township

In sports parlance, being "in the zone" means, of course, to achieve a state of heightened, virtually unconscious performance excellence for a sustained period of time. It's not an easy thing to achieve—there are no road maps and it can't be summoned by superstition—but the staff of high school coaches and former college standouts at In The Zone Baseball & Softball Academy knows something about being there. Mostly it takes loads of practice on every aspect of the game, including the obvious ones, such as hitting and pitching, as well as the subtler skills of strategy and furtively stealing bases by first becoming camouflaged in dirt. Instruction is dispensed through lessons and clinics held inside the academy's 8,000-square-foot facility, which includes six batting cages, two pitching lanes, and a fully turfed general use area.