New GFS baseball coach leading team to strong start

Posted 4/9/18

New GFS head coach Randy Mower works on a drill with members of his team looking on behind him. 2018 is his first year as head coach, but isn't his first with the program, as the St. Joe's alum has …

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New GFS baseball coach leading team to strong start

Posted

New GFS head coach Randy Mower works on a drill with members of his team looking on behind him. 2018 is his first year as head coach, but isn't his first with the program, as the St. Joe's alum has been with the team in some capacity for seven years now. (Photo by Jonathan Vander Lugt)

by Jonathan Vander Lugt

After a month of false hope from Mother Nature, Germantown Friends baseball, at 4-1 overall and 2-0 in the Friends League with wins over Moorestown Friends and Abington Friends, has started about as well as anyone could have hoped.

Heading into the season, the Tigers are down 11 seniors from 2017, adjusting to a new coach and dealing with the worst spring weather in the Philadelphia area in recent memory.

No matter, according to Randy Mower, the aforementioned new head of the program.

“The attitude has been great,” he said. “Changing the team to fit my personality has been pretty seamless. They’re coming off of a season where they’ve underachieved, so they weren’t in the best head space.”

Mower, who pitched for St. Joseph’s University and spent a year in the Gulf Coast League in the Washington Nationals organization, has been with the team for seven years now. He’s new, but not unfamiliar.

“Starting from the first meeting in the fall, I told them that we’ve got to have a positive team culture where we let the mistakes roll off of our back. We have to play for each other and I think that so far they’ve been great about it,” he said. “I’ve coached almost every single kid on this team at some point along the way. That makes it easier – it’s not like I’m starting from scratch.”

He is, however, rebuilding a team’s psyche that had suffered after several years of underachieving. Former head coach Tim Gunn is out and coaching at Lower Merion, and perhaps the three most talented players on last year’s team – Garrett Melby, Thomas Primosch and Sam Istvan – have all graduated and are playing ball at Haverford College.

Despite the talent, GFS struggled with back-to-back sub-.500 seasons in 2016 and 2017, paired with early flameouts in the Friends League playoffs each year. With such a young team this year, Mower has high expectations but is realistic.

“Maybe they just weren’t buying into the program (in years past). Maybe it was having too many cooks in the kitchen. For me, it’s about staying even-keel and staying consistent every day,” Mower said. “I try to keep expectations consistent, keep true to myself, not get too upset when things are going poorly and not getting too excited when they’re going well. I think I’m just trying to bring stability to a program that hasn’t really had it in the last couple years.”

His primary focus this year is – to no one’s surprise – pitching and defense. It’s an old conservative baseball cliché, but when you’re playing small-school high school baseball it’s crucial.

“I was a pitcher – so my big thing is that we’re going to pitch and defend well. I’ve put a lot of focus on that, which is easier to do when we’re inside than hitting,” Mower said. “That’s really the goal. We’re putting a lot of focus on being able to throw and catch it. If we can’t do that, we’re not going to get very far.”

If there’s one silver lining to the awful weather we’ve all suffered, it’s that due to being confined to practicing indoors, Mower and his team has had the ability to really focus on their pitching and defensive fundamentals.

It’s hard to practice hitting indoors – seeing pitches from a machine is nothing like seeing them live out of a pitcher’s hand – and there’s only so much benefit that hitting wiffle balls into a net will provide. Instead, Mower has taken the time to focus on Xs and Os, along with his bailiwick on the mound.

“I’m trying to not focus too hard on the weather because I can’t control it. Each gym space provides something different to work on,” he said. “We had a practice where we put in a lot of defensive strategy.”

In other words, a lot of standing around and listening to coaches explain defensive scenarios without actually getting to practice them on the field – fairly boring, if you ask most.

“It was one of our best practices of the year, and I was shocked,” Mower said. “Usually that stuff takes a little while to figure about, but they were locked in from the start.”

Mower has two senior captains: infielder Alex Mirage and catcher Johnny May. He’ll be looking to them to help provide leadership and smooth the bridge between the last coaching regime and his own.

“They’re both four-year varsity guys. They know the expectations, and what it takes to win a championship,” Mower said. “The thing that has surprised me the most is the buy-in from the kids. Sometimes I feel like they have more confidence in me than I do in myself, which is awesome.”

He went on, “They’re still on their best behavior because they’re still fighting for starting spots – we’ll see what it’s like in the middle of the season – but I couldn’t be happier with the way that it.'”

Around the Area:

As for the Inter-Ac, the season starts in earnest on Tuesday afternoon when league play kicks off. Germantown Academy, Penn Charter and Springside Chestnut Hill have all faced the same weather-related struggles that GFS has. SCH and GA played a spring training slate in warm-weather states, but all have limited experience so far dealing with the cooler northeastern temperatures.

SCH heads into conference play at 6-3, with their only games in the cold PA weather being a 1-0 loss to Neumann Goretti (last year’s PIAA 2A champ) and a 6-2 win over the Perkiomen School. They will take on the Haverford School at home on Tuesday.

Tim Ginter’s Germantown Academy squad (3-4 overall) has played only game in Pennsylvania – a 7-6 victory over Archbishop Carroll – and the Pats will host Penn Charter Tuesday to kick off league play.

The Quakers are 3-1 on the young season, with all four games being played when the weather allowed in and around Philadelphia. Following the aforementioned tussle with Germantown Academy, Penn Charter will travel to the Episcopal Academy Friday before playing neighborhood rival GFS on Saturday.

La Salle College High School is off to a great start – 5-0, with a 2-0 record (and 23-0 run differential) in Catholic League play. The Explorers will travel to Father Judge Monday before playing the Haverford School and hosting Conwell-Egan Catholic later in the week.

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