By STEVE KRAH
Matt Hille has been guiding teenagers in travel ball and will now get to lead them as the new head baseball coach at Fort Wayne (Ind.) South Side High School.
Hill has spent the past three years with the Summit City Sluggers and was supposed to help with the 14U program in 2023-24 before the opportunity to lead the Archers program arose.
Approved for the position last week, Hille’s priority right now is getting to know the players and school and individual and team goals while building a positive and confident outlook.
“I want to build the mindset that if you believe you can win and anything’s possible,” says Hille. “It doesn’t matter what’s happened in the past.”
South Side (enrollment around 1,500) is a member of the Summit Athletic Conference (with Fort Wayne Bishop Dwenger, Fort Wayne Bishop Luers, Fort Wayne Carroll, Fort Wayne Concordia Lutheran, Fort Wayne North Side, Fort Wayne Northrop, Fort Wayne Snider and Fort Wayne Wayne and Homestead).
The Archers are part of an IHSAA Class 4A sectional grouping in 2024 with Columbia City, Fort Wayne Wayne, Homestead, Huntington North and New Haven. South Side has won three sectional titles — 2012, 2018 and 2019.
An IHSAA Limited Contact Period (two days a week for two hours a day) started Dec. 4. Hille was planning to have an introduction meeting today (Dec. 12) and start practice this week while working around winter sports schedules.
Hille reached out to the previous coaching staff and got commitments from South Side alums Scott Florek and Evan VanSumeren and is seeking other assistants.
It’s likely that the Archers will field two teams in the spring — varsity and junior varsity.
South Side and practice about six miles off-campus at Derbyshire Field (formerly Elmhurst). The facility recently got new batting cages. Plans call for half walls in front of the dugouts.
Feeders for South Side baseball include Elmhurst Little League and Foster Park Little League. Hille plans to contact those leagues and youth camps are possible.
Growing up, Hille played at Times Corners/Don Ayres Little League.
As a 2005 Homestead High School graduate, Hille’s head coach was Keith Potter. Hille credits former Spartans freshman coach John Kroterfield for his impact.
“We became very close,” says Hille. “We really clicked. He took me under his wing. He’s one of the reasons I wanted to become a coach.
Hille appreciated the relationships Kroterfield built with his athletes and that approach rubbed off on him.
“It really seemed like he card,” says Hille of Kroterfield, who died in 2021. “That’s the emphasis that I’ve had. It’s being interested not just in baseball but in their lives.”
Hille, who also coaches middle school basketball, recently attended a New Haven wrestling meet featuring two players he coached with the Sluggers.
The 2024 season will be the senior year for one of the first groups he coached with the Sluggers and many of those will appear on South Side’s schedule.
“It’s going to be kind of bittersweet,” says Hille.
After high school, Hille played three seasons as a designated hitter and catcher at NCAA Division III Heidelberg University in Tiffin, Ohio. Matt Palm was then the Student Prince’s head coach.
“He was really passionate about baseball,” says Hille of Palm. “It was a small school with a small atmosphere and he had an open-door philosophy and an old-school brand of coaching.”
Hille and family reside on the south side of Fort Wayne not more than 10 minutes from the school.
Matt, who runs the plumbing division or New Haven-based Eagle Contracting, and wife Julie, a teacher at Arlington Elementary on the northeast side of Fort Wayne, have two children — son Matt Jr. (4) and daughter Elle (2).
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