Hi, everybody. This is my first year as head coach for the Valparaiso High School baseball team, and I am really enjoying and having fun working with these kids. I have a very good group and a great mixture of seniors, juniors and sophomores.

I have two great assistant coaches in Tim Holmes and Ryan Labis. The first week of practice included tryouts for all of our teams, and that was a tough week for me. I don’t like to cut kids that want to play baseball, but the numbers were just too high to keep everybody. I believe the toughest part of coaching is telling a kid he didn’t make the team.

Once we picked the teams, we had only one week of practice time together before our first game. We had some long practices needing to get a lot of fundamental drills in before the start of the season. I am trying to concentrate on teaching the fundamentals of the game as far as baserunning, catching and throwing the ball properly, proper hitting mechanics and also the mental aspects of fielding, running the bases and hitting.

We have made huge strides in those categories and will continue to get better and better. We played our first game this past week and won 3-1. I was very pleased with our effort, and we played a very sound game. The game we played Friday (March 30), however, was a totally opposite game for us. We were very poor fundamentally, and I was very disappointed with our approach to hitting. We battled back to tie the game 2-2 before darkness set in.

We have a big week coming up as we play five games in six days. I am looking forward to the week and am exciting about seeing some of our younger players perform. I believe we have a great underclassman group. We have practice today and will be continuing to work on making the right decisions on the field and the mental game of having good at-bats consistently.

We have struggled early with our hitting—too many strikeouts—so we need to correct that. We will also continue to lift weights and condition the kids throughout the season. We do weight workouts during the season to stay strong, as muscles tend to weaken during the course of the season, especially the shoulder muscles for pitchers.

Hopefully, I can keep working with the kids and instill the competitive nature of sports into these kids and teach them some life skills through the game of baseball.

Mickey Morandini is the head baseball coach of Valparaiso (Ind.) High School. Mickey enjoyed a fruitful 11-year career in the big leagues, playing second base for three teams, including the Chicago Cubs. He a fifth-round draft pick of the Philadelphia Phillies out of Indiana University in 1988.

Please visit Mickey's store, RSVP, which is located at 3907 Calumet Ave. Valparaiso, IN  46383. Hours of operation: Monday thru Friday 10-7, Saturday 10-3. RSVP specializes designing invitations for any event.