Kentridge alum Preston Viltz takes aim to help recruiting process

Once his playing career came to a close, Preston Viltz knew he could make an impact on the baseball community in more ways than one.

The 2018 Kentridge High School alum finished his collegiate baseball career at the University of Washington and moved to California. Following an appearance on Netflix’s “Squid Game: The Challenge” and a Dick’s Sporting Goods ad campaign, Viltz joined up with Adam Paganelli, a 2018 Tahoma High School graduate, to start a new company.

“We just started discussing the recruiting space and the problems we had,” Viltz said. “I wasn’t very highly recruited so I had to do all the outreach myself. There are limited roster spots and a plethora of kids. So it’s really hard in underserving regions like the Pacific Northwest to really get the eyes on you that you deserve.”

The two collegiate baseball players took aim at the recruiting process and the recent developments in AI technology. Thus, Next Commit was created, with an inspiration from a former coach, Jose Rijo of Rijo Athletics.

“He gave us this PDF file of all of these schools and coaches and all their contact information. For one it was pretty outdated, and two, it was very time consuming going through one by one, emailing each school to get exposure,” Viltz said.

In December 2024, the two went to work and were able to roll out Next Commit starting in April 2025.

Viltz’s goal is to help high school baseball players reach out to college coaches and find their home to play at the next level — in his own backyard.

“I look at recruiting in a different light now. The reason I find so much gratification is because I remember how excited I was and the people around me when a college coach would come to one of my games and watch. When I got an email or letter or really anything from a college coach. That is something I remember quite fondly and for me to be able to give that feeling back is really gratifying,” Viltz said.

With the database they formed, high school baseball players can find the program to fit their needs.

“Players can go in (to the program) and select the coaches they want to email. Then select an email template and the template will fully customize the email with data from their profile and match it not only to the school, but each individual coach. Now they can reach out to 100 coaches in the time that it took to reach out to one back in the day,” said Viltz.

There are three levels that potential recruits can subscribe to with Next Commit. There is a free version, which allows players to send 150 emails per month; a premium version that allows 500; and a deluxe that allows 1,500 emails to be sent per month.

Through partnerships with baseball programs, word of mouth and especially baseball tournaments, Viltz and Paganelli build their brand based on connecting and showing players that they were in their shoes not too long ago.

Viltz started his career at Sacramento State before going to Lower Columbia College and finding his way to the University of Washington, playing baseball at every level. Paganelli, on the other hand, started at Green River College and Sacramento City before finishing his college career at Northwest Nazarene. It’s not about where you start, but finding your home, in the eyes of Viltz.

“I went the route that a lot of people don’t take and is unexpected. From a kid that thought he wasn’t even going to play in college to someone who was able to make it to one of the highest levels in the Pacific Northwest,” Viltz said.

Currently baseball is the only sport that has its own database at Next Commit, but fastpitch is in the works to be released next. Eventually the hope is to have every sport offered through the platform, he said.

For players that are interested, players can visit https://www.nextcommit.ai/ to find out more.

Paganelli and Viltz playing youth baseball. Photo provided by Preston Viltz.