varsity.roanoke.com

SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Glenvar baseball coach Billy Wells works with his outfielders. This season, Wells, a former Highlanders assistant, switched jobs with ex-head coach Brian Crockett.

SAM DEAN The Roanoke Times

Glenvar baseball coach Billy Wells previously coached at Shawsville and Eastern Montgomery.

That's some heavy reading. The "Baseball Handbook" authored by new Glenvar coach Billy Wells goes 198 pages.

The Highlanders, who might have thought they knew something about baseball after repeated trips to the state playoffs, learned otherwise when Wells replaced former coach Brian Crockett after the 2008 season.

When other teams were unpacking balls and bats and loosening up tight throwing arms early this spring, the Highlanders were breaking out pencils, paper and their coach's publication in Wells' Baseball 101 classroom.

"We probably spent a week on that book," third baseman/pitcher Eric Austin said.

"Every time we have practice in the gym, we're in the classroom," shortstop Anthony Ratliff said.

Wells, 49, coached baseball for 21 seasons at Shawsville and Eastern Montgomery high schools before moving to Glenvar in 2007. He claims he is an easier instructor at Glenvar than he was with assorted Shawnees and Mustangs.

"I don't know that I would call it easy," Highlanders outfielder Kyle Horne said. "It may be easy on us physically. Mentally, he's always challenging us."

The handbook is a how-to manual covering pitching, hitting and base running, and how to react to different situations.

Bases loaded, wild pitch or passed ball, batter on the way to first. ... How do fielders react?

If you play for Glenvar, you better know the answer.

"Obviously, the pitcher covers the plate," Wells said. "But the first baseman has then got to sprint to the mound to be the backup there. If the catcher makes a wild throw to the pitcher at the plate and it gets by him, then the runner who started on second may actually come all the way around to score.

"So then, they could get two runs on one wild pitch or passed ball unless that first baseman is in position to back up."

"Have a plan," Wells counsels each of his hitters during games from the third-base coach's box.

As far as the players are concerned, the plan is to win it all.

"Our expectations are very high," said Horne, one of Glenvar's five seniors. "We're thinking about state. We're going to get through district and everything else, but our main goal is state this year."

That would have also been the goal under Crockett, who's still with the team as an assistant coach. Crockett sought the change in roles in part to avoid a potentially awkward situation coaching his own son Tyler, now on the junior varsity.

"I'm glad Billy's doing it -- he's coached a lot of baseball," Crockett said. "I've been lucky to have worked with some great coaches."

A couple of others being Larry Wood and Larry Long, former Glenvar coaches now head and assistant coach, respectively, at Roanoke College.

Wells and Crockett have been talking about the proposed coaching switch for almost as long as Wells has been at Glenvar.

"I told him, Brian, I'd be happy to be an assistant," said Wells, who filled that job last year. "As an assistant, I ain't got to order anything, I ain't got to take care of the field ... "

Crockett was persuasive, though. Following a Region C title and the Highlanders' second-straight trip to the Group A quarterfinals, where they lost 3-0 to J.J. Kelly to finish 22-4, Wells relented.

Now both of them seem happy, as you might expect from guys coaching a 5-1 squad whose only loss was 8-3 to 2008 AA quarterfinalist Hidden Valley on March 18.

"And we were up 2-0 in the fifth," Wells said.

Austin left that game with a shutout intact. After going 8-1 with an ERA under 2.00 last year, the broad-shouldered junior has thrown five shutout innings this year. He combined with right-hander Jonathan McGhee to blank perennial Region C power Grayson County 4-0 on the Blue Devils' field.

McGhee is 2-0 with a save in nine scoreless innings. He has 20 strikeouts and only two walks.

Ratliff, who sports a 4.0 grade point average, is hitting .500 with 10 runs scored, seven RBIs, and six steals. Austin is batting .437 with seven RBIs. He drove in over 30 runs last year as the Highlanders advanced to the state quarterfinals. Horne has eight hits and is batting .385.

Horne and McGhee are the only two senior starters.

Younger players have been in the mix on merit. Sophomore catcher Chase Strickland was a recent call-up from the JV. He's responded so far by hitting .500.

Freshman Todd Dunbar is starting at first base and is hitting .333 and has pitched five scoreless innings. Garrett Clay, a junior first-year varsity player has played four defensive positions and is batting .333.

Versatile defensive players, pitchers who throw strikes, guys who run the bases like their spikes are on fire ... all are typical components of a Wells-coached team.

Those traits produced eight regional entries, two Mountain Empire District titles, 14 All-Group A players, and a 294-162 career record for Wells. That doesn't count the two district championships he won coaching the American Legion team from Salem, or the 30 players he coached who played college baseball, or the four who later toiled professionally.

"It's going to be tougher to beat Glenvar with Billy coaching," said Floyd County coach Clay Moran, an old friend and rival. "It's not like Glenvar hasn't had good coaching, either. I don't know. It's just that Billy brings something different to the game with his intensity and knowledge.

"I'm not saying other coaches don't have knowledge. But at East Mont, he seemed to get the most [out] of his kids. Even when they had a down year, you dreaded playing them because you knew they could still beat you."

Nobody is more prepared than Wells, a Salem native who pitched in college for Longwood.

"I don't know anybody else who goes out and scouts teams," Moran said.

Where does Wells find the time? In addition to coaching Glenvar's varsity girls basketball team the last two years, he is also the official scorekeeper for the Salem Red Sox.

When the Sox are in town and there are no serious conflicts, he dashes off from practice to take his post in the press box.

Wells' meticulous attention to detail carries over to the players.

"Everything is planned out," said Ratliff, like Austin, a junior three-year starter. "Sometimes I think all he does is sit around and plan out our practices. He's got everything planned. He's got everything down on a little note card. Every person, every name is dictated to where they're supposed to be."

The players know where they want to be at the end of the season. As always, Wells takes a sober and studied approach to the future:

"We could be pretty good."