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First games as head coach

04 June 2007
On Saturday, I had my first official games as a head coach of a baseball team. Up until this summer, I've always been an assistant and never the actual head coach. Now I have a bunch of 15 and 16 year olds that officially call me Coach Helge.

Living where we do out in the mountains, we have to take some long drives to go play our games. We had to travel over 2 hours to get in our first doubleheader of the season, but it was well worth it when we got there.

Everyone usually remembers big "firsts" in the sport that they love. I'll never forget my first home run, first walk-off hit, and now, I'll never forget the first game as a head coach.

In the first game of the double dip, my pitcher threw a no-hitter. That sounds amazing and all (which it certainly was), but it gets better. My pitcher threw a no-hitter with only 8 people on the field. We also did it with our second baseman doing the one hand glove flip like Jim Abbott. He actually had a ball hit to him, gloved it, gloved flipped, and threw the runner out at first. It's really fun to watch someone compete like that.

Besides the ball hit to 2nd, we only had two other put outs in the infield (one to first and one to the pitcher) and the rest were strikeouts. A beautiful performance to watch.

We ended up splitting the doubleheader as we had 3 of our 4 infielders playing a position they've never played before.

Well, with that, I'm pumped up for the rest of our season this summer now.