Hello Baseball Family,

Please bear with me as this is a long message and me trying to open the door beyond the game and a peek into my heart.

Let me begin by first thanking Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for allowing me this monumental task, and to secondly thank you parents past and present for the opportunity to coach your children. It is an honor and a privilege to have the ability to work daily with young people, helping mold them into upstanding citizens through the game of baseball. It is a tremendous responsibility that I have always taken very seriously.

Baseball has the ability to teach players a lot about life. Humility, respect, and accountability are just a few characteristics and traits that can be developed from this great game. Players build confidence by encountering adversity through competition – an environment that our youth need to be exposed to as early and as often as possible to learn from and manage its outcomes. Lessons learned on the baseball diamond are vital to understand that in life, success is earned and not easily obtained. Baseball offers players the chance to learn the difference between entitlement and earning it. Too often we are societal victims of instant gratification and front-running with the winners until they are no longer winning.

The challenging side of the great responsibility as your child’s coach; is that I am faced with many difficult decisions each season regarding the players on the roster, as well as the entire direction of the baseball program. The biggest decision of each season occurs well before we step foot on the field. Each season I decide to volunteer my time to coach your children and teach this great game, and spend time away from my own family. The season is roughly March -November. Over that time period I spend, on average, approximately 9-20 hours per week with your son depending on if it’s a tournament week or not. I am fully aware of sacrifices that all parties make when it comes to my annual decision to return to coaching baseball. I know what I am getting myself into and so does my family. I have an incredibly understanding, loving family. They have stood by me for the last 20 years, as I have made that choice to continue coaching. Even though Kem and I are no longer married, she will never know the amount of love, and respect I have for her for allowing me to coach during our marriage. Even when it put a strain on our marriage, she stood by me year after year, hour after hour keeping my books, doing the little things that make the life of a coach easier. I had the opportunity to share my passion with her, and that is a lasting memory that I am forever grateful for.

Some of the other major decisions I have to make revolve around managing playing time during the season. There are many hats I wear in this life, a man, father, son and most importantly; a child of God. I am in my 20th season of coaching baseball and have coached several players who have gone on to play at the collegiate level. I have evaluated and coached hundreds of players with more than enough knowledge and experience of how to coach the game and what it takes to win. A coach experiences many sleepless nights, not out of concern over a reactionary parent text or email, but for the welfare and safety of his roster of his kids. Every player, past and present are my kids. I will do anything I can for them, and they are always on my mind.

Where is all this coming from, and what does this mean? That annual decision making process starts now, and with that I have decided that after 20 years this November will be my last coaching at this level. I have prayed about this for the last few weeks, and each time I come back to the same answer. The time is now to spend more time with my son and daughter before it is too late, and they are grown, and out of the house. I want to one day get married again. That starts with not having such a grueling schedule that will make it impossible to take care of any potential responsibilities at home. I also want you all to know that there are other opportunities inside the game that I will be pursuing at the beginning of the year. I am telling you all this now so that you will know that this fall I am 100% committed to righting the ship and making this fall one of lasting memories, and incredible growth of our players. You will get 100% focus, and drive that you have always seen from me. If the same 100% commitment and focus for this fall season is not shared by every person associated with our program it will not succeed. When we start back, let’s go out with a bang have fun, and be ready for the next step in each of our lives.

God Bless you all!
Coach T
Luke 6:43
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit”