A few practices are in the book, and I have been the one orchestrating what to do during practice and creating a lineup for our very first game. Having said that, I was not expecting my very first game as a head coach to go the way that it did. The Junior Acme team consisted of twelve players and we did not exactly have a strong pitching staff needless to say. Having to play the hand I was dealt, we made it out of the first game losing 21-3 at home. Now, the team we played had many kids that were juniors and seniors whom were going to play Varsity in the spring season and our team was rather young. It was definitely a learning experience for me and the kids whom have never had their butts kicked like that before. The score aside, I thought we played hard and never gave in to the much older players we faced. The hardest part for me was having to give the post game speech to the kids who had a look between wondering if I was ready for this and disappointment in themselves. I look forward to the upcoming weeks and proving I can succeed.

    Here I am, a person who is only a few years older than many kids on this team.  I somehow expect them to not only listen, but to respect and actually implement my advice into the sport of baseball. Luckily for me, I had the help of the spring Varsity coach to help me through the first practice because I was kind of nervous and not sure what to expect!  I also had an assistant to help me with the Junior Acme team which took some of the pressures off as I had not done a practice on my own before.

    During the first day we went through the basic practice to allow both the players and myself to get acclimated towards one another. We started with the typical "warm-up" period and the throwing program. After about fifteen minutes, we began batting practice. When I was a player, I thought this was the best part of practice as I got to show off the long ball a little bit. Now being on the opposite side, after throwing well over two hundred pitches over the course of multiple rounds to every player it is safe to say my shoulder was tired! As the end drew near for the first practice we did a quick pregame "In & Out" to make sure we are ready for the first game upcoming! It went decent but definitely has room for improvement. This could be an interesting season!

   
   

    Following my career at Indian Lake High School, I knew the coaches very well and we kept in touch. This summer came along and I was asked if I would be able to oversee a team of freshman and sophomores during the upcoming season as the head "Junior Acme" coach. I instantly agreed because I wanted to do something similar to this in the future and what better opportunity than to learn first hand at the very school I graduated from? Having been around the game my whole life and playing a little varsity at the collegiate level earlier that year the Spring coach felt I had all the tools necessary to mold these kids into varsity material the next season.


    I quickly learned when I was sat down to learn all the responsibilities of the job that it was not simply going to be a few hours a day throwing the baseball around a little and giving a few signs during a game. All the little things the job entails quickly showed itself. One of the most time consuming aspects of the job was making sure the field was kept in top shape. This includes keeping the grass cut, the field dragged, and weeds pulled. The concession stand also had to be stocked and readily available to people during the games. This could be a long season full of valuable experience and I was ready to attack it head on!