Like many coaches at Northwest, Kyle Wampler is intimately familiar with what it means to be a Lion. Wampler said he hopes that familiarity will help him build a sense of pride among his ranks.
A 2006 Northwest graduate, Wampler enters his first season as the head baseball coach following two seasons as an assistant under Greg Fortner. Wampler said being a graduate can help develop a level of trust with his players.
“I think with me being a former student here, I was in the baseball program, I walked these same halls, I sat in the same classrooms, so I think it helps me relate with these players,” Wampler said. “I grew up in the same neighborhood, so when I tell them, ‘I know what you’re dealing with, I know the type of struggles you have,’ I think the players can relate to that.”
And Wampler, who teaches biomedical science at the high school, said he’s also confident of maintaining the proper balance in the player-coach relationship.
“I’m 30, so I feel like I’m at that perfect age where the kids think, ‘Oh, he’s young enough that he knows what he’s talking about,’ but I’m old enough that, ‘We’re not buddies,’ there’s an authority part to it,” Wampler said. “I think right now, I’m at a great spot to take over and make this program my own, take it in the direction that I think we need to go.”
Which for Wampler means focusing everyone’s attention on the entire program.
“It’s about building a program instead of just building a team,” he said. “And we talk about it all the time, ‘What benefits our program as a whole.’ It’s not just what’s best for the varsity team, what’s best for JV. If the freshman team’s winning, we should all be celebrating it. We’re trying to make it a program thing here.”
Part of Wampler’s approach involves having the 30-plus players who make up the varsity and JV rosters practice together with the coaching staffs from both teams every day. Part of the reason for that, Wampler said, is to help build a program-wide camaraderie among the players, while the coaches can get a better sense of the available talent. But it can also make for an atmosphere of healthy competition, forcing the players to bring their best at all times.
“The upperclassmen know that there are other players trying to take their spots, and hopefully they’re pushing each other harder at practice,” Wampler said. “And for the sophomores and freshmen, they’re seeing what it takes to play at the next level up, and they’re pushing themselves to get better.”
So far, Wampler said the players appear open to the changes, and that mindset could go a long way to help Northwest build its first winning season since 2007. The Lions return several players from a junior-heavy group that went 5-13 a year ago.
“We have a core group of guys whom I think are buying into the mentality of expecting to win instead of expecting to lose,” Wampler said. “We know it’s a work in progress, and we’re not talking about going out there and winning the conference championship this year, but we’re talking about what it takes to go out and compete every single day, and let’s just see what happens.”
One player who will help raise the Lions’ compete level is senior Dustin Reese, who last year was named to the all-Suburban West Conference first team as a middle infielder after leading the team with a .400 average and driving in 10 runs. Reese, who also earned first-team all-district honors, will primarily play at shortstop but also see time at second base.
“He’s a guy whom we rely on to be in the middle of the lineup every day,” Wampler said. “We know he can hit well, we know he’s going to play great defense.”
Senior Caleb Camacho was named to the all-conference and all-district second teams as a designated hitter last season after batting .358 with a team-high 17 runs scored. Camacho will likely play half of the games in right field when not being used as the DH.
“Caleb is kind of an untraditional DH,” Wampler said. “He’s smaller, faster, hit leadoff a lot, but he gets the job done.”
Two other returning players named to the all-district second team last year are outfielders Evan Nault and Jaren Hollis. Nault batted .300 in 2017 and was the team leader with 11 walks.
“Evan is a team-first type of guy,” Wampler said. “Last year, him getting on base was something that we just expected him to do. He may not have had huge offensive numbers, but he was getting on base regularly, and I know that his approach hasn’t changed. He’s up there thinking, ‘How can I get on base? What can I do to help the team?’ ”
Hollis batted .306 with 10 RBIs and led the Lions with 10 stolen bases. Hollis also saw limited action on the mound, striking out 10 batters in 9 2/3 innings, and Wampler said he hopes the righthander will be one of Northwest’s top pitchers this spring.
“He’s an awesome athlete for us,” Wampler said. “He’s a mid-80s fastball guy, and he’s a guy whom we want to be able to go deep into games, but he can also close games out for us. He’s versatile that way.”
Senior Andrew Benton, who has signed to play baseball for William Penn University in Oskaloosa, Iowa, will play first base and also DH.
“Andrew has a ton of power,” Wampler said of the 6-2, 230-pounder. “He’s got a big body and can hit the ball a ton.”
Senior Tommy Fortune, a righthanded pitcher who has signed with Central Methodist University in Fayette, will likely take the mound several times.
“He can definitely pound the (strike) zone,” Wampler said. “He doesn’t have a ton of velocity, but he throws strikes, gets a lot of groundballs and flyouts.”
Other varsity players include: seniors Andrew Riordan, Ryan Lunsford and Brayden Venatta; juniors Nick Ribaudo, Jake Winstead, Seth Fortner, Carson Rees, Chuck Cornman and Tim Hughes; sophomore Austin Wilkins; and freshman Austin Jerger.
After opening the season in the St. Charles West Tournament with a 16-10 win over the host Warriors on Saturday, Northwest was scheduled to face Ritenour on Monday, after the Leader deadline. The Lions’ home opener is March 27 against Hillsboro.
Key for Fox: How fast can young Warriors mature?
It may just be your typical coach-speak, but from Neil Richardson’s initial comments last week, the Fox baseball team may be presenting its veteran skipper with a new sense of challenge this season.
“The only guys we know for sure whom we can count on for offense are Sean Cleary and Matt Bitter,” Richardson said. “But we do have a lot of young talent, and they will need to adjust to playing at the varsity level. Hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later.”
So how challenging will this season be?
“To be honest, that’s kind of where I was leading to,” Richardson said. “I think it will be one of my most challenging years. We’ve got two guys who have contributed at the varsity level returning. But we also have a talented group of juniors who have come up, so there will be a learning curve for them. And if they catch on, we’ll be fine.”
Richardson said he’s looking forward to what Cole Elwood and Joey Johnson can add to the mix. Senior Tommy Benner should be better now that he has some varsity experience. Caden Hastings looked good in the preseason, and R.J. Macay and Bobby Neibert are good athletes who have had success at lower levels.
But it all starts with pitching, and Richardson thinks he has some strength on the mound in Ryan Price, Brenden Wheeler, Bret Berry, Nathan Wagner and Tyler Rhodes. Price was 2-1 with a 3.82 earned-run average last season, and he threw a complete-game victory against Seckman, allowing just one run.
If their jamboree was any indication, the Warriors may be well suited to keep their head coach happy. After stumbling through a rough outing, both offensively and on defense against Festus, Fox blitzed Cape Girardeau Central 9-3.
“That’s kind of what we’re talking about with this season,” Richardson said. “Just like in our win against Cape Central, we’ve got to be able to get runs across and execute in key situations. We have to play consistently, and do it right from the start.”
After losing two tournaments and a handful of non-conference games to flooding last season, the Warriors finished with a 6-10 record.
“Not since I played during the flood of 1993 have I had a season like that, where we just couldn’t get on the field,” Richardson said. “You look at those two tournaments, that’s eight games we lost out on, and then they rushed to play conference games over non-conference, or who knows what our record might have been.”
Weather permitting this time, the Warriors were set to get out of the gate quickly this week, with games against Affton and Hazelwood Central.
“We’ll find out pretty quick as to what we have,” he said. “We’ll need a fairly strong non-conference showing, because there’s not a lot of time before we dive into league play. You can look at it as a challenge, but the guys have shown some real growth over the last little while.”
Jags’ coach counting to experience to come to fore
Bolstered by a veteran roster that contains 11 seniors, Seckman baseball head coach Brad Hagedorn is hoping to reverse last season’s 12-17 record or do even better than that.
And Hagedorn said he saw both the good and the bad of his team in the first two days of last week’s Troy Buchanan tournament.
The Jaguars dropped an 11-1 decision to Liberty, and followed that with a 5-0 shutout loss to Francis Howell before ending pool play by posting an 8-5 win over Chaminade.
Hagedorn was quick to point out that those aforementioned seniors will certainly play their share of roles.
“That’s a huge part, obviously,” Hagedorn said of the experience his team returns. “For one thing, most of them know what to expect: Like what we need to improve on from last year. Then you sprinkle in some young guys who are very knowledgeable about the game and doing things the right way.
“I think we can be really good with our pitching, good with the way we swing the bats, and if guys can play defense, which is something that hurt us in the tournament, we can come out and play how we’re capable of.”
As it usually does, success for Seckman will start with the pitching staff. Senior Blake Horning, who missed most of last season after undergoing surgery, is back to lead Hagedorn’s hurlers. “He’s back, and a full go,” the veteran coach said. “He has learned how to pitch a little bit differently, but has looked good so far. We hope for him to be one of our top three starters.”
Hagedorn said if Horning matches his potential, he’ll be a starter and will join sophomore Noah Bodine and junior Davis Mason, whom the coach said he’s been very impressed with.
“Mason kept Chaminade off-balance, and nearly pitched a complete game,” Hagedorn said. “He’s somebody we definitely think can stay in the top three and possibly move up.”
The offense starts with Drew Maloney, who hit .415 as its leadoff batter last year.
“And then there’s everybody else,” Hagedorn said.
Zac Voss was 4-4 against Chaminade, and Hagedorn said he’s counting on Voss to come up big. Ethon Anderson, Nate Robinson, Jake Waeltermann, Steven Reando and Mike Beattie all need to hit for Seckman to be successful.
“And Bryce McKinnon has had some good at-bats in the early going,” Hagedorn said.
With such an already established bunch of players, Hagedorn said he expects their experience to add up to a much better season than last campaign.
“We can’t overlook the things we did poorly last year,” he said, “and we still did some of those things in the Troy Tournament. But if we learn to do things the right way, then I think we have the potential to be really good. If we just relax, get going and just play like I know we’re capable of, I honestly think we’ll be fine and have a much better season than last year.”