St. Mary baseball will be heading into 2024 with athletic and student services director Toby Wegener as the new skipper for the Eagles.
Wegener is dusting off the baseball cap after nearly 20 years.
“I really hadn’t planned on it to be honest … The kids have been doing a great job since starting the season.”
Wegener coached at Brown City and Cass City before hanging up the cap back in 1997.
Former baseball coach and current cross country coach Nick Papes will be coaching the track team in its inaugural season. Avery and Jim Bunek will be helping with the assistant coaching duties.
The Eagles will be co-opting with Leland which will be bringin on six players to fill out a 21 person team.
“(Papes) did a really good job last year of instituting how to practice, how to come out and really worked at the fundamentals,” Wegener said. “It’s going to be about can we throw the ball over the plate? We’ve got a lot of kids who can go on the mound. It’s just whether or not they can throw consistently. We can probably put nine kids on the mound that know what they’re doing … we’re going to simplify things as far as hitting and try to really cut down on strikeouts, put balls in play, and run the bases.”
Leland students will help provide speed and depth to the Eagle squad.
St. Mary has high expectations and hopes to compete with the area’s best including Glen Lake.
“I know some of the kids that we just want to be competitive, you know, ‘cause they’ve had some games that just weren’t competitive and Glen lake of course is a beast. I’ve preached from day one that our goal is to give Glen Lake a game … get into the fifth or sixth inning and give them a game. We’ll see if we can do that,” Wegener said.
St. Mary will have the chance to do that when they kick off the season on April 11.
The Eagles will be relying upon seniors Luke Gallagher, Eli Kelenski and Jerry Schaub for St. Mary to be successful.
“We have to keep working hard in practice … We learned a lot from last year and I think we’re more experienced,” Kelenske said.
The Eagles will have to replace the production of graduate Jack Glynn who threw a no hitter last season.
Leland and St. Mary connection will have to gel if the Eagles hope to have a more successful season in 2024 than in 2023.
“We’re co-oping with Leland this year. It’s, it’s kind of the same team but a lot of new faces so, so it is, we’re young so yeah,” Gallagher said. “We are helping each other with plays, talking to each other, just trying to become buddies,” Gallagher said. “Especially once we get into games it’ll even be even better because when you win together you feel more of a, more of a team. We have a lot more intensity, a lot more talking, a lot more focus, a lot more reps. Just knowing what to do is our biggest thing.”
