The Utica High School baseball team is coming off its first winning season since 2016 with a 19-10 record and an appearance in the district semifinals, and while Coach Michael Sandman knows it will be hard to replace the 10 seniors lost to graduation, he is looking for the team to improve day by day.
Sandman called last year a “wonderful season,” saying that the seniors bought into the program and laid everything on the line. The Redskins had a chance for a league title until the last two games of the season.
“They battled and were able to go on the road and defeat an always-strong Jonathan Alder team to advance to the district semis. This year, our biggest challenge will be replacing all of the experience,” Sandman said. “We have a talented young group who are battling every day to improve. Our goal for this year is to improve 1% everyday and grow the brotherhood and the bond to help set us up for successful seasons to come.”
Sandman said this year the team is counting on plenty of new talent to step in and compete. Roman Gamble (CF/P) and Tyler Collura (third base) are expected to be the core of the young lineup as they are returning from a season where they started nearly every game. Jordan Hartman is also expected to be one of the top hitters in the lineup, and Sandman said he could be looking at a breakout year.
“Some of our strengths are we have a team that is very committed to the process of working hard every single day,” Sandman said. “We have an athletic group that has multiple spots still up for grabs. That is leading to tremendous preseason competition. Our weakness will be our youth – we could potentially be starting two freshman and six sophomores. We will have to grow up quickly and make the adjustment to playing varsity baseball.”
Sandman is no stranger to the baseball diamond at Utica, as he was in the class of 2009, in which the Redskins won back-to-back Mid Buckeye Conference titles and lost only one game during that time. He was a two-time All Ohioan and two-time MBC Player of the Year. He was also a two-time Mount Vernon News Pitcher of the Year. He went on to play baseball at Ball State University before returning to Utica as an assistant and now head coach. He has also coached in the Great Lakes League and the Ohio Collegiate League during the summer.
He said that his coaching philosophy is to coach the players hard and love them hard. He has created his coaching style based off his high school coach and the coach he started coaching under, Bren Henderson, as well as his college coaches, Greg Beals of Ohio State and Rich Maloney of Ball State. He said they all showed him many things that he has used in his coaching style.
“We want to push them to become the best all around student, athlete and young man that they can become,” Sandman said. “We want to be aggressive and we want to play the game the right way – always hustle on and off the field and be a team that people don’t want to play.”
This year’s team has adopted the concept of “kaizen,” which he explained is a Japanese term for constant improvement.
“With so much youth in our program, we want our guys to buy into the process of always improving,” he said.
Sandman said the team has had plenty of talent over the years. There are currently three alumni from last year’s squad playing in college, Josh Dillon of Rio Grande, Hunter Billman of MVNU and Brock Pfister of Muskingum. He also said there are several young players on the Redskins who have a chance at playing college ball.
Sandman said that he and his coaching staff always talk to the players about making the alumni proud.
“We have had a lot of great baseball teams in the history of Utica High School, and we try to have a program that makes our alumni and our community proud,” he said.
Utica will be moving to the Mid Buckeye Conference after competing in the Licking County League last season.
The Redskins kick off the regular season on the road on March 26 with a matchup against Granville Christian at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. game against Beechcroft. The first home game of the season is March 30 against Danville, with first pitch at 5 p.m.
