Coaches face major challenges in turning around programs

Russell County baseball coach Tony Rasmus knows a thing or two about building a baseball program.

When he took over the Warriors in 2001, there were only nine players in grades 9-12 on the team. That number was scarcely better in 2002, when it jumped to just 10 players. Behind that group, though, was one that would go down as one of the greatest in Alabama baseball history.

The team won a state and mythical national title in 2005 and was state runner-up in 2006. By the final season of Rasmus’ first stint at the school, 2013, Russell County was one of the premier programs in all of Alabama. It won 35 straight games that season before falling to eventual state champion Spanish Fort in three games in the state semifinals.

Rasmus left the program after 2013, spending a single year at Florence High before returning to Russell County. When he returned prior to the 2015 season, the program was back at square one, coming off a 2014 season in which it won just two games and lacking the elite frontline talent and deep bench that had become a signature of Warriors teams in the past.

The coach knew the challenges he’d face. They were the same challenges he faced in building the program from scratch more than a decade earlier. They are the same challenges that many teams around the area battle with in trying to get their programs off the ground and back to the level of contention they used to be in.

“I went through this same thing when I first started at Russell County,” Rasmus said. “Knowing the dynamics of the county and the lack of a great youth program, all those things kind of let me know going back what I was going to be dealing with.”

It’s a challenge common to all coaches trying to build a successful program — how to improve the numbers and commitment to success from an earlier age. Rasmus said that when he returned to Russell County, a lot of the things he would have expected to become second nature in Little League were things that he had to spend time on in practice.

“Instead of fine tuning skills, you’re trying to make sure they know what to do in different situations,” he said. “We went through the same thing when I first started.”

The solution to that problem? Start your program in middle school, not just at the high school level.

“What you do is you take seventh grade kids, and you teach them the game from the ground up, and that’s the team you win with,” Rasmus said.

This year, the Warriors have six eighth graders in the starting lineup, and Rasmus has already seen plenty of progress. They won 10 games all of last season and have already improved to 16-14 this year.

“Next year, I expect to be good,” Rasmus said. “The following year, I expect to be as good as we’ve ever been.”

First-year Pacelli coach Hart Mizell, who played two years of baseball at Columbus State in 2012-13, is taking a similar approach. The Vikings, who won a Class A state championship in 2008 and went 13-9 but missed the playoffs last year, are just 2-14 this year and have only 11 eligible players on the roster. One other player is a part of the program, but ineligible this season because he transferred to the school in the fall.

The challenges that come with low numbers are obvious when it comes to games. There is no depth. Slumps are unavoidable, and picking and placing fresh players into the lineup isn’t an option. Coaches must be extra careful in managing a pitching staff, because there is no depth to turn to if a player gets injured or runs out of gas.

The bigger problem, Mizell said, is in running a practicing effectively and being able to develop the players he’s got.

“It’s hard to run a practice with 12 kids, and it’s hard to run a game with 11,” he said. “You can’t do a full scrimmage, and there are only so many drills you can run because you don’t have multiple guys at each position.”

So, the challenge for Mizell becomes how to develop the numbers in his program. Like Rasmus, he is starting at a younger age. One of his biggest priorities is to avoid losing middle school players to transfers.

“We’ve got to stop losing our middle school kids,” he said. “Some of those players who go to Northside or Columbus (from Pacelli) end up being pretty good players.”

He said he mixes in time with the middle school team, trying to make them more a part of the program. He stresses that it’s a 6-12 program, not just high school.

“I try to show my face as much as I can there,” he said.

But that’s only a part of the bigger challenge.

Shaw coach Pat McGregor, has been trying to turn that program back into the state power it was in the early 2000s with a state title in 2001. Right now, the team is 4-10, but has lost close games to top region foes Columbus and Northside. The team has shown progress, McGregor said, but is still not at the level it needs to be.

Part of the challenge, like other coaches said, is keeping players at Shaw. McGregor clarified that transfers aren’t a bad thing — noting that Shaw has benefited from a couple of players, as well — but that it is an unavoidable challenge when families change schools because they think it is the best option for their child.

The remedy, McGregor said, is for the athletes and coaches who do stick with his program to be 100-percent committed to improving.

“It takes a village to raise a child, I guess they say,” he said. “It goes across the full spectrum. Administration, coaches, the community, the players. It falls on the athlete, too. Once they come here, working hard and buying in to what it is we’re doing. That way, when they get their chance, it’s on them to produce.”

This story was originally published March 26, 2016 at 4:00 PM with the headline "Coaches face major challenges in turning around programs."