Alum Redford first-year head coach, teacher for New Albany Bulldogs

By STEVE KRAH
http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Tim Redford was a player at New Albany (Ind.) High School when he proclaimed that one day he’d be the Bulldogs head baseball coach.
He just didn’t know that he’d be 24 when that proclamation came true.
Redford, a 2016 New Albany graduate, was offered in the job that came open with the retirement of Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association Hall of Famer Chris McIntyre in July and was school-board approved in early August.
The former catcher is also a first-year teacher with three hours each of Health and Physical Education each school day at NAHS.
Redford is heading into the fourth week of IHSAA Limited Contact practice. Twenty players who are not tied up with fall or winter sports have been on Mt. Tabor Field for two hours on Mondays and Thursdays.
“It’s nice,” says Redford of the limited contact. “I haven’t seen these kids play. I can figure out what we’ve got.”
Redford says heavy weightlifting and conditioning will likely start after fall break.
The past two years, Redford has been an assistant baseball coach at NAIA member Rheinhardt University (Waleska, Ga.).
“I love the college level,” says Redford. “But there’s nothing like home.”
Redford, who turns 25 in January, played for McIntyre. He was New Albany head coach for 26 seasons.
“He helped us off the field as much as on it with becoming good husbands, fathers and citizens,” says Redford for Coach Mac. “A lot of these kids aren’t going to play college baseball and it’s important.
“He did an incredible job.”
Redford was a catcher at New Albany and then at Kaskaskia College (a junior college in Centralia, Ill.) and NAIA member William Woods University (Fulton, Mo.). He says this experience helped prepare him for coaching.
“Catching is the hardest position in baseball in my opinion,” says Redford. “You’re involved in every play
be the quarterback on the field.”
Former Purdue University All-American Mitch Koester was Redford’s head coach at Kaskaskia.
“He’s great coach and a very, very good recruiter,” says Redford, whose college decision out of New Albany came down to the KC and John A. Logan in Carterville, Ill. “He’s a players’ coach. He knows his stuff.”
In two seasons at William Woods, Redford played for two head coaches — Brock Nehls (who went on to be pitching coach at Emporia State, Kan., University) and Chris Fletcher (who has helped start baseball at Moberly, Mo., Area Community College).
Redford earned an associate degree at Kaskaskia, an undergraduate Exercise Science degree with a concentration in Sports Management from William Woods and a Masters in Sports Administration and Leadership from Rheinhardt.
New Albany (enrollment around 1,840) is a member of the Hoosier Hills Conference (with Bedford North Lawrence, Columbus East, Floyd Central, Jeffersonville, Jennings County and Seymour).
The Bulldogs were champions of an IHSAA Class 4A sectional grouping in 2022 with Bedford North Lawrence, Floyd Central, Jeffersonville, Jennings County and Seymour. New Albany won its 23rd sectional title at Jennings County.
Redford is in the process of assembling his full coaching staff.
“We want to make sure we get the right guys in there,” says Redford.
Improvements at Mt. Tabor since Redford played include turf in fair and foul territory in the infield.
“They’ve rarely have to cancel home games last two years,” says Redford.
The facility also features in-ground dugouts, bleachers that wrap around dugout to dugout and a large press box with a locker room underneath.
New Albany Little League gives a foundation of the high school program
“Little League baseball around here has always been big,” says Redmond. “It’s got all the bells and whistles and a good reputation.
“It’s super nice to have a community that supports baseball as much as this one. That’s for sure.”
Shortstop Tucker Biven (Class of 2022) was an IHSBCA North/South All-Series participant and has moved on to the University of Louisville.
Pitcher/shortstop Landon Tiesing (Class of 2023) has committed to Kent State University.
Tim Redford III met Colleen Bayer at William Woods and recently purchased a house together. Tim III is the son of Tim Redford II and Marsha Redford and younger brother of Kyle Krinninger.

Tim Redford III. (Reinhardt University Photo)

Tim Redford III. (William Woods University Photo)

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New Albany graduate Rogers stays in control as pitcher in Yankees organization

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

Josh Rogers gets paid to throw a baseball now.

But the left-handed pitcher in the New York Yankees system is still following the advice of his head coach at New Albany High School.

Rogers was advised by Chris McIntyre to focus on the mental side of the game and things he can control and not to worry about those he can’t.

“It’s stuck with me,” says Rogers, who counts McIntyre as a good friend. “It’s like wanting to move up the ladder in the Yankees organization. I had been playing well in Tampa for so long.”

But Rogers knows that is the Yankees’ call.

After going 4-3 in eight starts with a 2.22 earned run average, 51 strikeouts and eight walks in 52 2/3 innings with the High Class-A Tampa Yankees (recently renamed the Tarpons), the southpaw starter did get the call in late May of 2017 to advance to the Double-A Trenton Thunder.

Before a bone spur ended his season on June 28, Rogers went 4-2 in seven starts with a 4.62 ERA, 29 K’s and eight walks in 39 innings.

“It’s been a long off-season for me,” says Rogers, who has been working out at the Katy Hearn Gym in New Albany and resumed throwing about three weeks ago in preparation for a Jan. 12 arrival at spring camp in Tampa. “I’m definitely going early. I’m comfortable with the Yankees staff. I hope to get an invite to big league camp this year.”

As a youngster, Rogers played in the New Albany Little League. Prior to his days at New Albany High School, his team came within one win of going to the Little league World Series in Williamsport, Pa., losing in the finals of the 2007 Great Lakes Regional.

For the next three summers, he played for the Indiana Prospects elite travel ball organization.

As a New Albany High Bulldog, he went 24-2 with a 1.07 ERA and 259 strikeouts.

He had already chosen the University of Louisville over Vanderbilt University prior to his senior season, which wound up lasting only a few innings in the first game of the season.

Rogers felt a twinge in his left elbow.

“I knew something wasn’t right,” says Rogers, who wound up having Tommy John reconstructive surgery. He graduated from New Albany June 2 and enrolled in summer school at Louisville the next day. He worked out twice a day and rehabbed his arm.

“It was a real grind,” says Rogers. “But it paid off. I came back sooner than we expected.”

The 6-foot-3 lefty was able to pitch for the Cardinals about a month into the 2014 season. He made 14 mound appearances (nine starts) and went 3-3 with a 3.63 ERA, 47 strikeouts and 12 walks in 52 innings.

Rogers then spent the first of two straight summers with the Bourne Braves in the Cape Cod League.

“That’s the most fun I’ve ever had playing baseball,” says Rogers, who was a combined 4-1 in nine starts with a 3.60 ERA, 27 strikeouts and 18 walks in 45 1/3 innings in 2014 and 2015. “The best players in college baseball are all in that league.”

Rogers earned second-team all-Atlantic Coast Conference honors and his second all-Louisville Regional selection in 2015, going 8-1 in 16 starts with a 3.36 ERA, 82 strikeouts and 25 walks in 93 2/3 innings.

At the Louisville, Rogers played for head coach Dan McDonnell and pitching coach Roger Williams.

Rogers credits McDonnell for his leadership and getting him ready for the challenge of pro baseball.

“It’s impressive the way he lives his life,” says Rogers of McDonnell. “He takes advantage of every single minute to make people better.

“When you go to the University of Louisville, you know what you’re getting into. It’s not an easy journey. You’ve got to earn that playing time.

“You also learn how to eat right, work out right and sleep right. These are things that have gone a long way into helping me with my career to this point.”

Rogers retired many a high school hitter with his breaking ball. In college, Williams convinced him that was not the way to go at higher levels.

“He’s the No. 1 reason I chose the University of Louisville,” says Rogers of Williams. “Hitters were at such a disadvantage when I threw a curve in high school. I thought that would carry over to college or professional baseball. (Williams taught me) a well-located fastball is the best pitch in baseball. Coach Williams really taught me how to pitch.”

Being draft-eligible after his sophomore season, the lefty was selected in the 11th round of the 2015 Major League Baseball First-Year Player Draft by the Yankees and signed with area scout Mike Gibbons.

Rogers split the 2015 season with the short-season Staten Island Yankees and Low Class-A Charlestown (S.C.) RiverDogs then 2016 with Charleston and Tampa. In those first two pro seasons, he went 14-6 in 29 appearances (24 starts) with a 2.71 ERA, 131 strikeouts and 25 walks in 139 2/3 innings.

Josh (23) is he oldest child in a family of five. Bobby and Eldora also have Haley (21) and Chase (12). The family was able to watch Josh pitch in-person plenty when he was at Louisville and they have gotten to see him a few times in each of his pro seasons.

Rogers is 38 credits shy of a sport administration degree at Louisville.

“I promised my parents and Coach Mac that I will get my degree,” says Rogers. “I’ll keep chipping away at it.”

Throwing from a high three-quarter arm slot, Rogers looks to command his pitch selection of fastball (thrown as a four- or two-seamer or cutter), slider and change-up. When he was moved up to Double-A, he was convinced to throw the fastball even more frequently — maybe 65 percent of the time.

Rogers spent many an hour in the bullpen with Tampa pitching coach Tim Norton learning to develop the change-up and making mechanical delivery tweaks. The two also battled it out on the golf course.

“It’s a pretty cool relationship,” says Rogers. “You don’t call them ‘Coach’ in pro ball, just their name.”

While the Yankees certainly take an interest in the development of a player, he knows the responsibility ultimately lies with that player.

“It’s your career,” says Rogers. “If you’re not ready and slacking, it’s up to you.

“The Yankees do a lot of job of giving people equal opportunity. It just may take longer to someone that is a higher draft pick that they’ve given more money to.

If you control what you can control and focus on helping your team win every time out, the chips will fall where they’re supposed to.”

Josh Rogers, a 2013 New Albany High School graduate who pitched two seasons at the University of Louisville and was drafted in 2015 by the New York Yankees, delivers a pitch in 2017 for the Double-A Trenton Thunder. (Trenton Thunder Photo)

 

 

McIntyre guiding baseball program at tradition-rich New Albany

By STEVE KRAH

http://www.IndianaRBI.com

New Albany High School is proud of its past and looking forward to its future.

Founded in 1853, New Albany is oldest public high school in Indiana and one of the oldest west of the Alleghenies.

There are many proud alums sending their children to the school where they attended.

It’s at this place that Chris McIntyre heads into his 24th season as head baseball coach in 2018.

“We have a lot of tradition,” says McIntyre, who has led the Bulldogs to a 487-206 mark with 10 sectional championships — the most-recent in 2016 — and five Hoosier Hills Conference titles and 12 Indiana High School Baseball Coaches Association North/South All-Star Series participants in his first 23 seasons. “Our kids take a lot of pride in wearing the uniform. They really put New Albany first as to where their priorities lie.”

While some of his top players go with travel baseball organizations, McIntyre, the former IHSBCA president and an all-star series coach in 2000 and 2016, still coaches a summer high school team through a schedule of about 25 games in an urban school district that has 50 percent of its students on a free-or-reduced-lunch program.

“It’s becoming harder and harder to find high school teams to schedule games,” says McIntyre. “But there are some players who would never get a chance to play the next season without it. It’s an important part of our program. If we ever lose that, it’s going to hurt us.”

While the Bulldogs don’t have an indoor hitting facility, they do have Mt. Tabor Field.

Located on the Mt. Tabor Elementary School grounds about four miles from the high school campus, the field sports a Bermuda grass playing surface that was recently laser-graded. To save on maintenance, there is turf around home plate and baselines have been sodded.

Since the facility is land-locked by a road and a drainage ditch, high fences — 12 feet in right and left fields and 18 feet from gap to gap — were installed a few years ago.

“We’ve taken away some of the cheap home runs,” says McIntyre.

More improvements are on the way following the 2018 season, including new dugouts, bleachers, press box and concession stand.

The land adjacent to the field has been the home of New Albany Little League. That organization has moved and the school corporation-owned land will go to the construction of the junior varsity field.

“It’s going to look a whole lot different than it does now,” says McIntyre. “We’re really spoiled.”

While there are bound to be exceptions, McIntyre does not expect the scoreboard to get a workout.

“We pride ourselves in always having good defensive teams and pitchers who throw strikes,” says McIntyre. “If the other team doesn’t score any runs, you have a pretty good record.

“We don’t tend to have too many high-scoring games. We don’t beat too many people 10-9.”

McIntyre says the ability to run can play a major role in a high school baseball team’s strategy.

“You can change the game with your overall team speed,” says McIntyre. “But that comes and goes. Sometimes you have those guys and sometimes you don’t. It’s the luck of the draw.

“At the 4A level, you face such good pitching, you’re not going to score a lot of runs.”

That’s where it comes back to making the plays on defense and pitchers holding the other team in-check.

McIntyre talks to his players about being mentally strong and disciplined and controlling the controlable.

“You can’t control the umpire or the other team’s pitching,” says McIntyre. “You can control where you are on defense, where you throw the ball, how you running bases, getting signals correct and all those things.”

Besides New Albany, the Hoosier Hills Conference (along with Bedford North Lawrence, Columbus East, Floyd Central, Jeffersonville, Jennings County, Madison Consolidated and Seymour).

The HHC does not play a regular-season conference schedule. The conference champion is determined during a tournament in early May. Games are pre-drawn and played Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

HCC teams are spread out. New Albany is about 75 miles from Bedford North Lawrence and 55 from Columbus East and does not see the Stars or Olympians unless it’s in the tournament.

The weekends are when the Bulldogs may travel to or host teams in Evansville like Mater Dei, North or Reitz. Jasper and South Dearborn are regulars on the schedule as is Fort Wayne Carroll, which comes to New Albany early in the season.

Lowell (Mich.) stops in town for a split doubleheader involving Seymour on the Red Arrows’ way back from spring break in Pensacola, Fla.

The Bulldogs are scheduled to play games in northern Kentucky near Cincinnati.

IHSAA travel rules restrict teams from going more than 300 miles from the state line.

“We try to play a couple teams every year we’ve never played,” says McIntyre. “We can get into northern Alabama and the northern tip of Mississippi. Nashville (Tenn.) is as far as we’ve gone.”

New Albany, an IHSAA Class 4A school, is coming off a 17-10 season in 2017. The Bulldogs played six freshman and sophomores at various times.

First-team all-state first baseman Ryan Robison (who has not yet made a college commitment) and Chase Rudy (a Purdue commit) are already three-year varsity players expected back for their senior seasons in New Albany colors.

Graduates currently with college programs include Austin Dickey at the University of Louisville, Timmie Redford at Kaskaskia College in Illinois and Jack Shine at Hanover College.

Josh Rogers pitched for Louisville and is now in the New York Yankees organization. The 6-foot-3 left-hander appeared in seven games at Double-A in 2017. In three pro seasons, he is a combined 22-11.

McIntyre is a 1986 graduate of Jeffersonville, where he played for IHSBCA Hall of Famer Don Poole.

“He was a super guy,” says McIntyre of Poole. “You don’t realize it at the time, but look back on it and realize how little he ever raised his voice. You just respected him. When he raised his voice, he meant business. He wanted it done and he wanted it done now.”

Even years after his retirement, Poole amazes McIntyre with his baseball mind.

“He remembers every pitch from every game,” says McIntyre. “He knows the game inside and out.”

McIntyre did not play at but did study at Indiana University Southeast. He spent one season as an assistant to IHSBCA Hall of Famer Wayne Stock at Clarksville and three as an Evansville North assistant before taking the reigns at New Albany.

McIntyre recalls Stock’s prowess as an offensive instructor.

“He was an old school baseball guy and he was awesome at teaching hitting,” says McIntyre. “He never bunted. He was a true ‘Earl Weaver’ kind of manager, playing for the three-run home run.”

He also remembers Stock as a generous man that often went into his own pocket to help where he saw a need.

“There wasn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for a kid,” says McIntyre.

Looking to coach his own personality, McIntyre wants his players enjoy the time spend with him.

“You just hope you leave a good impression with your players,” says McIntyre.

A math teacher at New Albany, McIntyre is married to biology teacher Shannon. The couple have two boys. Tyler (15) is a sophomore baseball player. Kevin (11) is a competitive swimmer.

Chris McIntyre is going into his 24th season as head baseball coach at New Albany High School in 2018. The 1986 Jeffersonville High School graduate is 13 wins shy of 500 for his career. (Tom Little Photo)