By STEVE KRAH
Construction begins soon on a new baseball field at South Newton High School in Kentland, Ind.
All games for the 2024 season — the first with Kyle Ellrod as head coach — will be played away from campus.
The Rebels are scheduled to begin the schedule with a “home” doubleheader Saturday, March 30 against Fountain Central at Goodland (Ind.) Baseball Park, which is about eight miles southeast of South Newton.
Other home games are to be played at Saint Joseph’s College in Rensselaer, Ind. That’s about 20 miles northeast of campus.
Ellrod says Tim Taylor has been instrumental in getting the SJC diamond back up and running.
Taylor and Buddy Scott are Ellrod’s assistants. Both are new to the high school baseball staff this year and have coached boys basketball for the Rebels.
South Newton (enrollment around 250) is a member of the expanded Midwest Athletic Conference (with DeMotte Christian, Faith Christian, Frontier, North Newton, North White, Tri-County and West Central).
Each MAC team plays one another twice.
The Rebels are part of an IHSAA Class 1A sectional grouping in 2024 with Clinton Central, Faith Christian, Frontier, Rossville and Tri-County. South Newton has won eight sectional crowns — the last in 2017.
Among other teams on the schedule are Benton Central, North Miami, Seeger, Twin Lakes and Watseka (Ill.).
“I think we’re going to go out there and play competitive baseball and surprise a lot of people,” says Ellrod, who was a baseball assistant in 2022-23 and is in his third year as a teacher in the South Newton School Corporation where instructs high school Government and Economics as well as sixth grade Social Studies.
He has coached three boys basketball seasons — the past two for eighth graders after one with the sixth grade team.
Before South Newton, Indiana State University graduate Ellrod was a half-year interim teacher at Attica.
A 2007 graduate of Terre Haute (Ind.) North Vigo High School, Ellrod counts his father — Dennis Ellrod and grandfather Eugene Ellrod Sr. — as mentors.
“My dad was a huge impact on my life,” says Kyle of the man who died in 2020. “He coached my Little League and basketball teams.”
The younger Ellrod played for an AAU-style basketball team during his prep years.
He also received coaching from his grandfather.
Eugene Ellrod Sr., who is also deceased, coached Babe Ruth League baseball in Terre Haute for more than 25 years. One of his players was a young Tommy John, who went on to pitch 26 big league seasons and win 288 games.
With 16 players in the program, Ellrod says there probably will not be a full junior varsity schedule but some JV games will be scheduled for the many younger players on the team to gain experience.
The first day of IHSAA practice was March 11. Before that was a Limited Contact Period of two days a week for two hours.
“We did about as much as we could,” says Ellrod of that time. “We had the boys in working on hitting, pitching and fielding.”
Kentland Baseball Association for ages 4-14 is a feeder for the South Newton program. There is currently no junior high baseball at the school.
Following the team can be done via the South Newton Facebook page. Ellrod says a page devoted to baseball is in the works. The schools’ X (formerly Twitter) handle is @SouthNewton.