‘Cats looking forward to season
Published 9:51 pm Thursday, October 2, 2008
After a dismal 4 and 16 season in 1999, the Mount Si Wildcat
varsity baseball team has no place to go but up, and leading that charge this
year will be new head coach Gary McGregor. McGregor, who has
been an assistant coach for six years is enjoying his first chance at head
coaching duties. But the move to head coach hasn’t been easy and poor turnout
for the 2000 season has highlighted the amount of work the program will take.
“We have spent the first week on defensive fundamentals,
touted McGregor. “We are going to be a fundamentally sound team, pick up
the ball, throw the ball, throw the ball over the plate, catch the fly ball,
whatever. We are going to make all the routine plays and if we get the fancy or
over- the-shoulder catch, diving for ground balls and making the throw to
first, great; but what I want them to do is be fundamentally sound …
execute all the fundamentals of bunt defense, first
and third defense, catchers’ throwing the runners out at second.”
Three starters return for Mount Si, Matt Murphy and Marc and
Mike Dahm; but Nick Roeber, Sean Sattler and Joey Adams all have varsity
experience along with Mike and Marc Dahm. The team boasts four
seniors in Roeber, Murphy, Adams and first- year player, Shaun Meehan.
Forty-six kids turned out, just enough to field three full
teams. “Thirty-seven freshman turned out for soccer. We had seven,” said
coach McGregor. “No middle school ball has finally caught up with us, even
though Little League has picked it up a little bit,” he added.
“Instead of 11, 12, 13 that come up in a class for the first time that
we can develop, we have seven total,” he continued.
Pitching was a major problem last year and McGregor knows that
consistent pitching is the key to wins.
“I think we will be better by a couple of ball games for the
simple fact that the pitchers are going to throw the ball over the plate,” said
McGregor. “We lost nine games simply because we couldn’t throw the ball over
the plate. We had nine ball games of one or two runs, where three or more
of the total runs were walks or errors. We had ball games that we had six
walks in,” he added.
“We have to make them put the ball in play, let the other eight
guys behind [the pitcher] make the play,” he continued.
“We see ourselves in the middle of the pack. We finished dead last,
last year at 4 _ 16. I think we are capable of six or seven ball games. If we
win nine then we are in the playoffs,” said McGregor.
Standing out in the coach’s mind besides the returning varsity
players is a sophomore, Bryce Kaestner. “I really like him. He was a JV kid
last year … has great mechanics, great attitude, plays summer ball with
the Boys of Summer, which is a great program,” said McGregor. “He had
three appearances and they play 50 or 60 games which was a great
experience for him.
Likely starters for the varsity are as follows: At first base will be
veteran Mike Dahm with brother Marc handling duties at second base.
Shortstop will be Sean Sattler and third base will be covered by Aaron
Svarthumle. Out in the field will be Roeber in
left, Tyler Osborne in center and Adams in right.
Kaestner, will play in the outfield when he isn’t pitching and the
powerhouse Steve Botulinski will fill in at first. Adam Vandenbrake will
also likely get some varsity action in several positions.
For a designated hitter, McGregor likes David Labelle who is a
second- string catcher. “I don’t anticipate
taking Murphy out of the game and don’t want him sitting all year,”
said McGregor. “So when we need him to get some catching time, we will
send him down to JV.”
“We will do a lot of that, instead of having three guys sitting on
the bench for two weeks without a bat or in the field, [we’ll] send them
down to JV for some experience,” he added.
Assisting at the varsity level will be a familiar face, 1998 Mount
Si graduate Charlie Cabe. The JV head coach will be Verne Newell and
the “C” team coach will be newcomer, Jeremy Smith, a first-year teacher at
the high school. Smith most recently coached wrestling at Chief
Kanim Middle School.
“Jerry Cabe will be filling in at all levels and has a schedule of
what games he will go to. With five of us, we can always have two coaches
at every game, said McGregor, and Jerry will bounce between varsity, JV
and C. So he’ll see about 40 ball games instead of 20.”
This year’s home opener will be against Hazen here on
Thursday, March 16. The home league opener will be against Sammamish on
March 21 with game times at 4 p.m.
