THE GAME KEY
About us

Bio on Bryce Palar

Bryce currently resides in Illinois where he works full time and is a high school and American Legion baseball coach. Bryce was a High School Head Baseball Coach from 2007-2009 and has been coaching American Legion Baseball since 2007. Before he was a head coach he spent one year as an assistant coach at a local high school in 2006. Bryce graduated from an MVC university in 2005 where he played division 1 baseball for three years. After an injury shortened his career he was a student assistant coach for another two seasons. He also played one summer in the Northwoods Collegiate League. While in high school, Bryce was a four year starter at the varsity level and was also a four year member or an American Legion program. His playing days were very successful and provided a great foundation for him to build upon as a baseball coach and mentor. He has competed in 8 state tournaments as a player and two World Series. As a coach, He has seen two more state tournaments in just three years.

Game Key Background

In March of 2009, Bryce Palar developed what is now called The Game Key. In the baseball community, calling pitches from coach to catcher was generally done with the coach touching a body part in sequence to relay the pitch. Bryce felt that he could improve upon this system by creating a system which uses numbers to relay pitches. This led to his creation of the current system which is now The Game Key.

This invention was tested throughout the 2009 spring baseball season of Bryce’s team, The system was also tested during the summer of 2009 with Bryce’s Legion baseball team. The system ran flawlessly in the 66 game test. With the system in place, both teams competed with an ERA of under 3 runs per game, had no signs stolen by opposing teams and not one missed sign during either season.

Bio on Dylan Cross

Dylan has been around baseball and softball since birth, with a brother and two sisters playing everything from travel ball to college softball. He comes from a very athletic family with a brother who played football at the University of Iowa and a sister who played softball as a Hawkeye and reached the College World Series. His father has over 35 years of coaching experience and began teaching him the game at a very early age. As a travel baseball player he was a part of a state runner-up team as well as a 4^th place world series finish. Dylan was a three year starter for the Alleman Pioneers in high school. In his first varsity season as a sophomore he helped lead the team to their first Western Big Six championship in 22 years. During this season he was one of only 8 sophomores in the nation invited to play on the junior Olympic team and train in Florida at the Dodgertown complex. He was named all metro in all three of his varsity seasons, honorable mention all WB6 his sophomore year and first team all WB6 his junior and senior seasons. As a junior he led the varsity team in average and RBI. His senior season he was named Metro player of the year while winning the WB6 triple crown, leading the league in average, RBI and home runs. He also earned all state honors during this season and was a unanimous selection to the all WB6 team. After high school Dylan went on to play one season of college baseball at Augustana College. Shortly after the season he turned to coaching and is now in his 5^th year of coaching. In two years of being the hitting coach for the Alleman Pioneers his teams set and reset virtually every offensive record at the school. During the 2008 season, Alleman hit over 40 home runs as a team in a 35 game schedule. Dylan has been giving hitting lessons for 5 years now and continues to work with players from 7 years old all the way through the college level.