This spring season, the boys baseball team will be playing with an interim head coach, Kevin Koch. This is Koch’s first year being a head coach for the baseball team, as he was an assistant coach until 2019. Koch expects and welcomes the fact that this upcoming season will put up some challenges, but knows that it comes with excitement as well.
“I am very excited to return to high school coaching. Westside has a rich tradition in baseball and I hope to help return the program to the top.” Koch said.
Though this is Koch’s first year head coaching the baseball team, he has much experience leading different teams throughout the midwest. He himself played baseball in high school at Millard North and was an all-state player. In his college career, he played at Missouri Southern, and played in the DII College World Series his junior and senior years.
“After college I began teaching and coaching at [Millard North]. I was the head coach for 3 years,” Koch said. “Then I became the volunteer assistant at University of Nebraska for two years. Both years we played in the CWS.”
Once he left Nebraska, he moved to Indiana and worked at the University of Evansville where he was an assistant. During his last year there, they won the Missouri Valley conference and made it to the regional final. After that, he came back to Omaha, coached a college summer league and was head coach at Burke for three years till he came to Westside to be assistant. Koch ended up stepping down from this position to coach his son’s team. Clearly, Koch has lots of experience coaching baseball. For Koch’s year at Westside he hopes to help his players accomplish all that they want.
“I hope to infuse energy into the program. I want players to be excited about playing for Westside,” Koch said. “I want to help those who are interested to get the opportunity to play at the next level.”
Overall, Koch explains that he took this position this spring to help the program transition to the team’s new coach next year. He explains his relationship with next year’s coach and how they were able to reach the point of Koch as an interim coach.
“I have been friends with Coach Shockey for quite a while. We felt it was important to have somebody who has had head coaching experience and someone that was a teacher in the building already to lead the program until he can come take over for the Legion season this summer,” Koch said.
A returning sophomore on the varsity team, Markus Chandler, sees how much Koch had been around baseball and trusts in his ability to coach this team.
“I think our new coach will be a great fit for our team and program. Coach Koch has been around baseball and coaching all his life, so I’m pretty excited about him being our new coach,” Chandler said.
With only being the coach for one year, challenges will occur and the team will be able to persevere through them. Koch shares what he expects to see this year that will pose difficulty.
“I know that we have a challenging schedule and there are a lot of good teams in Class A,” Koch said. “We have lots of good players who will need to learn how to play together and learn how to win.”
From a player’s perspective Chandler shares the challenges he perceives will occur from the fact that their coach next year is still coaching for another school.
“One challenge I feel is us knowing that our coach for next year is still competing for the same title our team is this year, and that’s a state championship,” Chandler said.
Though this year will pose challenges, Chandler feels that the team will be able to get through them and have a great season this year.
“Our team will adapt very well to this change. I think we all got a lot better by being faster, stronger and throwing harder this off season,” Chandler said.
The boys baseball season will begin this spring, near the end of March. Be ready to see how they have improved and their new coach, Coach Koch.
