Tuesday, April 7, 2009

After only six freshmen showed up for baseball tryouts earlier this season, Lincoln High Head Coach Todd Sandberg started trolling the hallways of the Star City's oldest high school, looking for recruitment candidates.  The sixth-year coach found three more recruits, one of whom had a broken leg and another who was a girl.    "Our student body here at Lincoln High is becoming much more international with a growing Hispanic population and even a fairly large contingent of Iraqis," observed Sandberg.  "As a result, there seem to be fewer kids coming out for baseball while soccer is doing very well.  This spring , for the first time ever, we actually had more kids at LHS try out for soccer than for baseball."

Although the Links' opponent last Saturday, Omaha North Magnet High School, is experiencing renewed interest in baseball at the school, first-year Head Coach Mike Greene-Walsh's faces a problem in getting some of the school's best athletes to participate in baseball.  "We're a school  with a predominantly African-American student population," noted Greene-Walsh.  "Yet we have only three African-American kids in the baseball program."   Like Coach Sandberg, Coach Greene-Walsh has very few kids coming into his program from the "select" teams that feed most of the top baseball schools. 

In fact, building quality "feeder" programs for their respective schools ranks as the highest priority for each coach.  "We have a lot of kids coming from  YMCA programs where the number of games played and the level of coaching doesn't compare with what happens in select ball," stated Greene-Walsh.  Meanwhile, the growth of select teams in Lincoln resulted in the abandonment of the venerable Babe Ruth League operated by Bill Fagler.  "Last year was the first year without Babe Ruth for kids eight through fifteen.  That league was just no longer viable," commented Sandberg.  "It really hurt our numbers this spring.  We have more and more kids coming into our program who don't know the basics.  Several don't even own spikes or a ballglove."

Greene-Walsh would like to see more kids coming in from quality feeder programs, but at least North is gaining ground in the numbers game this year.  "We had over sixty kids out for baseball this year, which, while it pales in comparison to the Preps, Westsides and Millards of the world, is a twenty-player increase for us.  We ended up keeping eighteen freshman ballplayers, which should have good long-term effects."  Some of the renewed interest has to do with a coaching change at the school.  With a new coach at the helm, some kids who had dropped out the program in the past came back to give baseball another try.  Also, as a magnet school, North draws kids from across the city where at least Little League is available. 

"The sad part is," observed Sandberg as Greene-Walsh nodded in agreement, "is that most of the suburban schools cut a lot of kids who could be real studs for us.  Many of them are leaving the game of baseball altogether after being cut, but if they were at school like ours they would have tremendous opportunities to keep playing, get noticed and maybe even go on to a college baseball career.  Kids develop at different times in different ways.  If your baseball career comes to an end during your freshman or sophomore year, who knows what kind of ballplayer you might have been.  We offer kids a chance to find out."

In terms of facilities, both coaches have fought uphill battles.  Although the Links, like other Lincoln schools, play their games at Sherman and Den Hartog, construction on their on-campus practice field is now in its second year, forcing the Links to find alternatives.  North plays at a recently refurbished Fontanelle Field, but nearly all of the work to restore the ballfield has been done by the summer Legion baseball boosters.  That group is finalizing plans for the installation of a new scoreboard at the park within the coming days.  As is true for the summer baseball programs at South and Central, who also play in off-campus facilities at city parks, the Omaha Public Schools has provided very limited financial support for facilities, which has required each program to find its own funding for needed improvements at their respective ballparks.  Moreover, neither North nor Lincoln High has commercial indoor training facilities in their neighborhoods where their ballplayers may train in the off-season as is the case in suburban neighborhoods in the Metro. 

Both coaches make it clear that the challenges they face competing with affluent suburban schools that have a ready supply of talent flowing in from "select" teams are not going to prevent them from doing everything they can to put a solid ballclub on the field.  "We're not offering excuses," noted Sandberg.  Coach Greene-Walsh nodded in agreement and remarked that "we just tell our kids that they have to work harder than everyone else if they want to compete."

North (3-5) has already equaled its 2008 win total; Lincoln High is currently 2-5 after going 7-16 last year.  The Links won the head-to-head match-up last Saturday by a score of 9-8 in a game that saw several lead changes and ended with North's tying run stranded at third.