BUILDING BLOCKS

Andy Hight Seeks To Build Tradition For First-Year Program

By Seth Herrold
R-T Sports Editor
Anyone who has ever attempted to build something from the ground up knows it isn’t easy. They also know that in the end – more often than not – it’s worth it.
Trenton High School is in the building business this year: building a baseball program that is. When looking for a foreman to head up this project, Trenton turned to Andy Hight.
Hight was a natural choice. He had ties to the area and a good baseball background. He came in with a vision of the program that won over those in charge of finding a guide to build the program – especially athletic director Wes Croy.
“(Hight) had the experience, one,” Croy said. “He has a good background in baseball as a player and a coach. He is very organized and we liked the plan he came in with. He had a progression of what he wanted our baseball program to look like and how to grow it. We were just really excited with what we felt he could bring to what is a new program that needs to be nurtured as we get it off the ground.”
Growing up in Hallsville, Hight was introduced to the game at a young age. The son of a high school baseball coach, he soon excelled on the diamond and helped lead Hallsville to consecutive state championships in 2004 and 2005.
“My dad coached high school baseball and high school softball,” Hight said. “When I first fell in love with baseball has to be either in my yard with my dad or at one of his practices.”
Hight would carry his career to the collegiate level, playing with North Central Missouri College under Donnie Hillerman, who was in his first season at the helm of the Pirates’ program.
Hight’s playing career would end at William Woods. After transfering there, a shoulder injury sustained at NCMC flared up. Hight wouldn’t be a player for Williams Woods, but he was definitely a part of the program, serving first as a student assistant, then a graduate assistant and finally an actual assistant coach.He spent the last two seasons guiding the Cameron Dragons’ high school baseball program.
Hight’s tie to Trenton was his wife, Emily Schmidt, who was his fiance at the time. She worked for her family’s dairy farm so, to be closer to her, Hight moved and found a baseball job close enough where he could commute on a daily basis.
“You can’t move land,” Hight said. “So, I took the job at Cameron. I always wanted to be closer to Trenton, but what was holding me up was that I was a head coach at Cameron and did I really want to leave that to come to a school that didn’t have baseball.”
When Trenton decided to implement a baseball team, Hight jumped at the opportunity. It was a perfect fit for both sides. Hight got his baseball job in Trenton and the school got an experienced coach to build the program.
“Very few people get the opportunity to build a program from the ground up,” Hight said. “Having the opportunity to do that – especially in Trenton where I went to North Central, where my wife is from, where I want to spend the rest of my life – was a huge deal to me.”
Building the program would prove to be an endeavor. There was so much to do, from finding uniforms to getting kids excited for the sport and constructing a schedule. Hight and Croy worked diligently putting a full schedule in place, all the while knowing they would have to tear it down and redo it in a mere two years as the Grand River Conference closes in on implementing baseball as an official conference sport.
Along with Trenton, five other schools new to the conference – Milan, Putnam County, St. Joseph Christian, North Andrew and Pattonsburg – also field baseball teams. Braymer, which was already a GRC member prior to this season, also fields a team and gives the conference seven schools with baseball, one shy of the eight required to make it an official conference sport. Princeton will begin playing baseball this season in a co-op with Mercer, but the two schools will play under the Mercer banner, meaning they will not officially represent a GRC school. South Harrison and a few other schools within the league are seeking to start baseball programs as well.
“It was difficult, there is no question,” Croy said. “Coach Hight was a great help because of all of the contacts he has in the baseball coaching community that he was able to reach out to. That was a definite help for me getting the schedule together and then it was also helpful that we were able to join the Grand River Conference, where Milan and Putnam came in with programs and some other schools are starting baseball at the same time we are. We were able to get those on the schedule, too. It was some work but , the most part, it went together fairly well. We are excited to see how it works out in the first year here.”
Hight was also charged with coming up with a logo for the team – something to identify the new program. Hight was seeking something that the players would like, something to draw them to the sport and the program. Hight also put an emphasis on a modern, simple and clean look.
His first option was the famed Tennessee-style T that Trenton sports on its football helmets. The logo has since branched out to the boys’ track, tennis and golf teams as well as occasional appearances on Trenton’s softball jerseys and basketball warm-ups.
When push came to shove, however, Hight ultimately settled on a T based off of the Missouri Tigers’ new school-wide font, introduced just prior to their move to the Southeastern Conference.
“I’m kind of torn on it,” Hight said of his creation. “The T we use in football and several other sports, I like it. But when I started playing with it on baseball hats, I didn’t like it as much. I looked at several different fonts and kind of landed on that Mizzou font. I don’t know that we will stay with it forever. What I want, though, is that when people see that T they know; ‘okay, that is Trenton baseball’.”
With logo creation and scheduleing ongoing, Hight also had to find players. With successful track and golf teams already on the docket for spring sports and an established tennis program, Hight was seeking players, but tip-toeing around the other sports so as not to disrupt their rosters.
“I’ve only had a handful of conversations with kids about them coming out,” Hight said. “And the reason for that is that I don’t want to lure kids away from other sports to come to us. If I were to do that and that kid comes out and doesn’t have a good experience, then he may feel like he wasted a year. I want the kids who want to be out and if that’s 19, that’s great. If it’s 25, that’s great, too.”
Hight knew there was interest from a lot of students, however, thanks to survey research conducted by Croy and Superintendent Dan Wiebers prior to taking the program to the school board for a vote. A summer camp held this past summer cemented what the research found – there was a lot of interest. Eight months later the interest remains. Hight says all but one or two of the campers are committed to the team’s inaugural season this spring. There have been pick-ups along the way as well.
The biggest challenge to building the program may still be ahead for Hight. The schedule was tough, getting a logo and uniforms together was a challenge, but when the players step onto the field today for the first practice, Hight will be teaching the game to a group of players that don’t have a ton of experience on the diamond. Several have been a part of summer programs, but haven’t seen high school baseball as it is during a true spring season.
North Harrison – Trenton’s opponent for the first game in program history to be played at 10 a.m. on Saturday, March 18 – will be entering its second season of competition this year. Last year that team went just 1-10 in its first go at the sport. While Hight is aware challenges will arise in year one, he doesn’t necessarily believe his team can’t compete simply because it is the program’s first year.
“I think it is a big challenge,” Hight said. “But what we focus on is the culture. I truly believe that if you work hard, you have fun while you are doing it and you work well together, the culture will take care of itself. What I’m most concerned about is that we play the game the right way and respect the game by playing it hard. We need to set up the parameters of what our program looks like in our first year.
“Now, do I want to win? Absolutely. But I believe we have to build the culture first before we can go out and win 20 games and be successful. I think we can get there and I don’t buy into the fact that you can’t be successful just because it is your first year. But I also know that because of our experience level and the competition we are going to play that we are going to be challenged in a lot of games. I tell the kids all the time that culture beats talent when talent is equal. I think we will be in a lot of games this year where our talent isn’t equal, but I think that our culture and the way that we play the game will close that gap.”