By STEVE KRAH
Andy Fischer has a simple formula for baseball success as head coach at Heritage Hills High School in Lincoln City, Ind.
“We we try to be as fundamentally-sound as possible,” says Fischer. “We spend a lot of times on those techniques.
“We keep it as simple as possible. We try to minimize (the game) to 21 outs.”
A 1998 Heritage Hills graduate, Fischer was a Patriots assistant for nine years before taking the program’s reins. The 2021 season will be his fourth in that role.
The COVID-19 pandemic took away the 2020 slate statewide. It hit hard at Heritage Hills where expectations were high.
“It’s pretty aggravating,” says Fischer. “We were going to have eight seniors. We were going to have a very experienced pitching staff coming back and a handful of three-year starters.
“It was disappointing not being able to see what they were going to do.”
In 2019, the Patriots won 22 games and were runners-up in the Pocket Athletic Conference and IHSAA Class 3A Evansville Bosse Sectional.
The PAC has expanded from eight to 12 schools in 2020-21. Boonville, Mount Vernon (Posey), Princeton and Washington have joined Heritage Hills, Forest Park, Gibson Southern, North Posey, Pike Central, South Spencer, Tecumseh and Tell City. Each team will meet each other once during the conference season.
Heritage Hills (enrollment around 600) is part of a 3A sectional grouping with Boonville, Evansville Bosse, Evansville Memorial, Gibson Southern and Mount Vernon (Posey). The Patriots last won a sectional crown in 2011.
Fischer, who counts Mike Guth and Brad Fella as assistant coaches and is looking to fill a couple vacancies, expects to have around 25 in the program next spring to fill varsity and junior varsity rosters.
Simon Scherry, a member of the Heritage Hills Class of 2020, is now a freshman infielder at the NCAA Division I University of Evansville. Other recent graduates in the collegiate baseball ranks include sophomore infielder Mitchel Becher (NCAA Division II University of Missouri-St. Louis) and junior infielder Sam Pinckert (NCAA Division III Muskingum University in New Concord, Ohio).
Heritage Hill’s home field is on its campus. About a decade ago, the infield was changed to have cut-out areas around home plate and the bases with grass in the other areas.
“It helps with drainage,” says Fischer. “We very rarely have rain-out games now.
“It plays just like a turf field.”
Another unique feature is a batter’s eye 375 feet from the plate in center field.
“It’s the only one I know of in southern Indiana,” says Fischer of the structure made of green barn metal that is 60 feet wide and 24 feet tall and topped by the same yellow capping as the rest of the fence.
Much of the outfield is surrounded by woods.
“Before leaves are on the trees it’s really hard to pick up a baseball,” says Fischer, who built the batter’s eye based on a design created by his Heritage Hills engineering students.
Fischer earned an Elementary Education degree with a Mathematics minor at the University of Southern Indiana in Evansville, where he briefly played baseball.
He earned a Masters of Business Administration (MBA) from Oakland City (Ind.) University and an Engineering Accreditation for teaching at the University of Kentucky.
Besides teaching and coaching baseball, Fischer is the head girls soccer coach at Heritage Hills. The Patriots won the 2020 2A Bosse Sectional then fell in the Jasper Regional championship match. The team was without senior Haley Osborne during the tournament because of COVID-19 quarantine.
With most baseball players in football, soccer and cross county in the fall and Fischer coaching girls soccer, Heritage Hills did not meet during the fall Limited Contact Period for baseball.
When the next window opens in December, plans call for station work in the school’s fieldhouse.
“We’ll do a lot of hitting and arm exercises to get our pitchers ready,” says Fischer.
Feeder systems for Patriots include the various parks in the North Spencer Little League (T-ball through age 12) and the Heritage Hills Cub program (seventh and eighth graders with varsity and JV teams).
Andy and wife Rachael have three children ages 12, 9 and 6.
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