For Love Of The Game - Parks Employees Volunteer As Coaches

Most Little League teams are coached by parents of kids on the team. And most of the time, the Parks and Rec staff in charge of getting the ball fields ready for play are long gone by the time the first pitch is thrown.

This season, though, four staff members from Dalton's Parks and Recreation Department stepped up and volunteered to coach teams even though they didn’t have kids on the squads.

“I love the game of baseball,” says Brandon Rittenhouse, one of the volunteer coaches. “I remember playing and how much fun I had playing rec ball and you know it’s better to have someone who wants to do it rather than just having a dad out there who maybe doesn’t care as much about the game.”

Photo at right: Parks and Recreation staff members Justin Cole, Brandon Rittenhouse, Austin Fariss, and Garrett Franks volunteered as Little League coaches this season

“I grew up playing rec ball,” said Garrett Franks, another volunteer coach. “It was really just the drive to make these kids better that was why I liked doing it. It’s letting them grow and build their character.”

This season was Dalton’s first as an affiliate of Little League Baseball, and the crop of players ages 8 to 12 years old were divided according to their skill levels into major league or minor league classifications. Rittenhouse and fellow Parks and Rec staff member Justin Cole teamed up to manage the Mudcats in the minor group. Franks and Austin Fariss managed the Smokies, also in the minor league division.

“I like to say I’m pretty good at baseball even though I haven’t played in a long time,” said Franks, a 21-year old graduate of Northwest Whitfield High School. “It’s more of a challenge to see if you can teach it instead of playing it, and I think that’s a character builder for all of us who are coaching.”

“When we came out here for our first practice, we had some kids who knew what was going on but a lot of the kids you could tell, It was probably their first time ever being on a baseball field,” said Cole, who has worked for the Parks and Recreation Department for seven years, first performing maintenance at the ball fields and now working at Haig Mill Lake Park. “So it was great to see where now they’ve really picked up the game and really gotten a lot better as far as putting the bat on the ball or throwing it a little better... it’s fun to watch and see how some stuff you implement comes into play and makes them better and really helps them grow as kids and hopefully keep playing in the future.”

Photo at left: Justin Cole

The chance to be around baseball was a great opportunity for 20-year old Brandon Rittenhouse, who is working full-time for the Parks and Rec Department as well as going to school full-time and also volunteering as a coach with a middle school team.

“That just shows my love for the game,” he said. “It’s different coaching the different age levels, I had to make an adjustment on how I was going to run practices or teach stuff because the middle school kids already have some of the fundamentals down pat but as far as rec ball goes you come in and most of these kids have never played so it’s different. You’re having to teach them the right batting stance, teach them how to catch.”

Photo at right: Brandon Rittenhouse

“Coming in and seeing how the kids grew this year was just incredible to me, it was really eye-opening,” said Fariss, a 27-year old who has worked for Parks and Rec the past four years. Though this was his first year coaching, he’s volunteered as an umpire ever since he quit playing ball. “I’ve been around baseball my entire life, and to see the coaching side of it and even to see what we do during the day come to fruition at night – because we [maintenance staff] don’t usually see the games, we just line the fields and get them ready during the day - so, to see it come full circle and see the end result of the games was really cool for me.”

The stories from the season are too numerous to tell, but each of the coaches have moments to look back on that bring a smile.

“We had a kid on our team who was kinda like a happy-go-lucky type player. No matter what happened, he was going to go out there and give his best. He’s one of the kids who just put a smile on your face no matter what he was doing,” said Rittenhouse. “The last regular season game he actually got hit by a pitch so I went out to see if he was OK. He was like ‘it hurt, I want to go home’ and I said, ‘no, you can’t go home, we’ve got to finish the game.’ So he went back out there and he played well.”

“We had a kid, he had rolled his ankle or something like that at school during recess. We didn’t know about it until he got to the game,” Franks recalled. “He showed up in full uniform and he told us he couldn’t play but he was there to cheer for his team and he was right there in the dugout, yelling out the batting order and cheering on his team in the dugout and that really made me happy.”

Photo at left: Garrett Franks

“We had one kid who was probably not the best baseball player but he had a huge heart on him,” Fariss said. “In our second-to-last game of the season he finally put a ball in play and got a single and to see the smile on his face that was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.”

Of course, when the four coaches’ two teams met on the field, bragging rights were on the line.

“Oh, there was a rivalry all season,” said Rittenhouse. “It was kind of one of those things where we wanted to beat them really bad. We had that game circled like, ‘we HAVE to win this game.’”

The Mudcats and Smokies played twice this season. The Mudcats started the season winless in the early-bird tournament, but came back to knock off the Smokies in their first meeting.

“When we lost that first game to them, there was a jersey hanging up on the time clock for us to see the next morning,” said Fariss, laughing. “When we played them again later in the season, we beat them so [Garrett and I] had to get in here before them the next day so we could change that jersey out for them. So there was a little bit of a rivalry there.”

Photo at right: Austin Fariss

Friendly rivalry aside, the four Parks and Rec employees agree that their stint as coaches was just an extension of their day jobs with Parks and Rec, working to make sure the kids have a great experience playing ball.

“I think we all want the kids to feel like they’re coming into a major league stadium when they come out here,” said Fariss. “There aren’t a lot of parks that have the grass infields like what we have here and have the facilities that we have here, and we take pride in that. To be able to add to that and to actually coach the players and help build a program with some talent in it was a big deal.”