Dragon coach honors roots
Not every high school baseball coach has the self-assurance to list Knights of Columbus parochial league experience on the first line of his résumé.
But ask St. George’s coach Bob Pate about his coaching background, and the first school he mentions is Cataldo Elementary, from where he took the big jump to St. Aloysius!
Suffice it to say that Pate is a guy who knows where he came from, and in his first year at St. George’s, he knows where he’s going – to the Washington State Class 2B state tournament. After winning the District 7 tournament earlier this week, the Dragons will face perennial powerhouse DeSales Saturday morning at Shadle Park in a regional matchup.
The Dragons (18-2) return to the state tournament for the third straight season, having lost in the first round the past two years. They lost a number of key seniors in 2007 but have a core of veterans and several outstanding younger players who brought another Panorama League 2B championship to St. George’s.
The Dragons did everything right this season, scoring in double figures during 16 of their 20 games and – on the other side of the ledger – shutting out four opponents and holding two others to one run.
“We pound the ball,” said Pate, “but this time of year it’s pitching and defense that’ll carry you. We’ve been good on the mound all season long, and we’ve very rarely committed more than one or two errors in a game.”
Pate assisted his brother Scott at St. George’s before inheriting the head job, and the list of head coaches for whom he played in his younger days reads like a Northwest baseball Hall of Fame: Washington State University’s Bobo Brayton, Butch Fowler at Yakima Valley College and Bob MacDonald at the University of Washington among them.
But Pate goes back further than that to credit his high school, Babe Ruth and American Legion coaches, Chuck Stocker, Pete Lewis, Joe Feist and Jack Spring.
“My coaching is based on what those guys taught me,” he said. “I’ve always tried to coach the same I was coached, starting with my dad. I think the kids here have responded very well. The way you build a team is to build confidence, and that means lots of repetition and tempering discipline with fun. The biggest thing is to keep the game new, fun and exciting to the guys.”
The Dragons have a number of four-year varsity veterans, including outfielder Sam Annan, shortstop Mike Wilhelm and pitcher-third baseman Colin Barker. Pate has coached many of his players, including those three, for several years.
Annan has started every game for four years and has also played soccer and run cross country at St. George’s. Wilhelm, says Pate, is the Dragons’ emotional leader, while Barker has come back from a knee injury as a junior to have a solid senior season. First baseman Cecil Trail is “a coach’s dream,” he says, and catcher Trenton Hauff has a batting average in the .750 range.
Wilhelm, headed for Whitworth next fall to study music, credits Pate for promoting a team-first mentality that has made playing less stressful and more fun.
“He’s a great team coach,” said the senior. “I’ve been here a while, and we’re playing more like a team than ever before. Sometimes in the past we’ve had really talented players who were more for themselves, and if something went wrong, like a strikeout or an error, they’d turn the switch off.
“We’ve still got lots of really talented individuals, but coach has emphasized that a mistake isn’t the end of the world and not to let it get into your head. That’s really helped our younger guys to step it up.”
To be more successful at state, says Barker, the Dragons need offensive production throughout the lineup, and the team has to maintain its pitching and defensive consistency. Both he and Wilhelm are impressed by the way the veterans and younger players have bonded.
That’s something that Pate feels good about, too.
“What’s really unique on this team is that the players genuinely care about each other,” he said. “We have great team chemistry, and that closeness has helped the guys to let the bad plays go and make the next one.”
Going back to his baseball roots, he concluded: “I want for my players to feel the same way about me in 20 or 30 years the way I feel about those guys. I hope to build the same kind of connection.”