2009 Coach of the Year

By Matt Nascone | Troy Messenger

Published Saturday, May 30, 2009

Baseball managers and players are more often than not superstitious people. You won’t see a lot of managers step on the foul line when going out for a visit with the pitcher and you will see many players perform a “good luck” ritual before a game or at-bat.

Derek Irons falls into the superstitious category. The OCP became a common treat before a game on road trips for Irons and Charles Henderson assistant coach Brandon Stephens during the 2009 campaign. It all started on the way to the Nike Spring Break Classic in Gulf Shores earlier this year.

“We were on our way to the Gulf Shores tournament and Derek got hungry, so I told him to look in my bag for something to eat,” Stephens said. “He pulled out an oatmeal creme pie for a snack. He really likes oatmeal creme pies in the dugout.”

The Trojans did not make the championship game, but Irons said after the tournament that he believed the Trojans played some of their best baseball in the tournament.

“Ever since then we had an oatmeal creme pie before every road game,” Stephens said.

Irons led the Trojans to a 28-12 record and the third round of the playoffs in his first year at the helm of the team. He inherited a team that had lost eight seniors to graduation from last year’s state runner-up. This distinction allowed Irons to nab The Messenger’s 2009 Baseball All-County Coach of the Year award.

“It is certainly an honor to be chosen for this award,” Irons said. “But it really just reflects on what a great program this is and how well our kids played this year because the bottom line is if they don’t go out and execute it doesn’t really matter a whole lot what we do.”

Irons said the credit goes to the players and to the men helping him in the dugout.

“I think coach Stephens was a huge part of the success this year and I owe him a huge debt of thanks for what he was able to do in sticking with the program and helping me out so many times in this transition,” he said. “He does a great job off the field in his relationship with these guys and he does a great job on the field. Our guys know how important he is to this program and I know how important he is.”

The Trojans accomplished something in 2009 that had not been accomplished since the 2003 season. They went a perfect 6-0 in area play. There had always been at least one game per season that would trip the Trojans up, but not in 2009.

“That was a cool thing because the bar is so high in so many ways here so there are not a whole lot of things that you can do and say ‘That hasn’t been done in a while,’” Irons said. “So that was neat to be able to say that we were the first team in six years to go through the area undefeated. And I was proud of our guys because that was one of their focuses throughout the season. They wanted to go through all six of those games and not have a let-down.”

Irons knew that he was going to a tradition-rich program when he signed on to be the head coach.

“One of the biggest attributes of a program is knowing how to win,” Irons said. “Sometimes you can see teams that just know how to win and these guys for the past several years have known how to win and that made things a whole lot easier.”

Another aspect of this year’s Trojans that made the transition much easier for Irons was how the team bought into what he was preaching.

“I felt like there was a lot of patience going both ways,” Irons said. “There could have been a lot of times where we butted heads a little bit because they didn’t do things the way I wanted or I was saying things in a way they weren’t used too. But I felt like we came together pretty well and finished the season strong.”

Stephens began helping with the baseball team in 2007 and he said Irons has a way of approaching the game that led to success on the field in 2009.

“Derek is consistent on the field and off the field,” Stephens said. “He teaches these boys more than baseball. He teaches them how to live their lives. He was the right man for the job. He befriended the guys, but never lost his authority. What he said was what had to be followed, but at the same time he invested enough in their lives that he befriended them.”

But it is not just his philosophy of how to run a team that helped the Trojans succeed this year. Stephens stuck with the program after his former manager left for one reason.

“I saw a good, Christian man that had his goals planned and mapped out,” Stephens said. “His philosophy as far as dealing with the kids lined up perfectly with mine. I knew that I was not going to have to worry about my kids coming to practice and hearing and seeing things out of him that were not what I teach my boys. And that was the decision right there.”

Irons will have his work cut out for him next year, as the Trojans’ program will again lose a huge chunk of starters. The Trojans graduated nine seniors Thursday and six of those nine were major contributors to the 28-12 record in ’09.

Irons said he accepts the challenge and is ready to move forward next year.

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