Wolves baseball coach wins with right execution, strong fundamentals
By Mike Hamson
Special Correspondent Published: February 24, 2016
TBO.com
LITHIA — After working with a young team last year, Newsome Wolves baseball head coach Dick Rohrberg said he is ready to mold a more advanced group of players.
Before coming to Newsome High, Rohrberg coached at Robinson and Chamberlain. He led Chamberlain to the state playoffs five times.
“Last year was my first year here, and we had a pretty young team,” Rohrberg said. “We had a couple of seniors and we finished 14 and 11. We won some big games. We beat Alonso. We beat Bloomingdale twice.”
A former coach in Pasco County at Sunlake High, Rohrberg replaced Bill Highsmith at Newsome. He said he worked for Hillsborough County for 13 years before coaching in Pasco for six years. He returned to Hillsborough County to lead the Wolves.
“We are a brand new staff as of last year,” he said. “We assembled some guys from the area that were not affiliated with the program. It’s been a big learning process, trying to get everyone on board with what we want to do and how we want to do it.”
Rohrberg said he is looking forward to watching break-out players this season, including senior Matt Leslie, a right-handed pitcher.
“He has been a fairly consistent pitcher, but really developing breaking pitches — could become a workhorse for us,” Rohrberg said.
As far as the team’s main county competition, he says Alonso High is the toughest. He said their district has changed this year to include Sarasota, Riverview, Alonso, Palm Harbor University and Newsome.
“Baseball is a sport where everyone tries to do the same thing, but the team that executes better, wins. You play better defense, move the ball on offense, move runners over, throw strikes and get guys out,” he said.
“I think the big thing is we try to instill is a sense of discipline, deal with things the right way and all the time work hard. In the sport of baseball, sometimes it’s not the best athletes that win. It’s the guys and the teams that do the little things right, being fundamentally sound.”
Rohrberg said Newsome is a 9A school, which is the biggest classification in the state. He explained how the schools battle it out to get to playoffs.
“We play everybody twice,” he said. “The team with the best record will play the team with the worst record and the two and three seeds will play each other. And then the two winners advance to the finals and both of those schools will go onto the state tournament. The winner hosts the first round and the loser has to travel.”
Paul Lindstrom, the Wolves athletic director and the assistant principal at Newsome, said he is enthusiastic about the spring athletic season.
“We have a good group of seniors,” Lindstrom said. “We have some strong senior pitching we are going to rely on. We do have some young athletes that are baseball players who are starting to make a difference and come into their own as well.”
Special Correspondent Published: February 24, 2016
TBO.com
LITHIA — After working with a young team last year, Newsome Wolves baseball head coach Dick Rohrberg said he is ready to mold a more advanced group of players.
Before coming to Newsome High, Rohrberg coached at Robinson and Chamberlain. He led Chamberlain to the state playoffs five times.
“Last year was my first year here, and we had a pretty young team,” Rohrberg said. “We had a couple of seniors and we finished 14 and 11. We won some big games. We beat Alonso. We beat Bloomingdale twice.”
A former coach in Pasco County at Sunlake High, Rohrberg replaced Bill Highsmith at Newsome. He said he worked for Hillsborough County for 13 years before coaching in Pasco for six years. He returned to Hillsborough County to lead the Wolves.
“We are a brand new staff as of last year,” he said. “We assembled some guys from the area that were not affiliated with the program. It’s been a big learning process, trying to get everyone on board with what we want to do and how we want to do it.”
Rohrberg said he is looking forward to watching break-out players this season, including senior Matt Leslie, a right-handed pitcher.
“He has been a fairly consistent pitcher, but really developing breaking pitches — could become a workhorse for us,” Rohrberg said.
As far as the team’s main county competition, he says Alonso High is the toughest. He said their district has changed this year to include Sarasota, Riverview, Alonso, Palm Harbor University and Newsome.
“Baseball is a sport where everyone tries to do the same thing, but the team that executes better, wins. You play better defense, move the ball on offense, move runners over, throw strikes and get guys out,” he said.
“I think the big thing is we try to instill is a sense of discipline, deal with things the right way and all the time work hard. In the sport of baseball, sometimes it’s not the best athletes that win. It’s the guys and the teams that do the little things right, being fundamentally sound.”
Rohrberg said Newsome is a 9A school, which is the biggest classification in the state. He explained how the schools battle it out to get to playoffs.
“We play everybody twice,” he said. “The team with the best record will play the team with the worst record and the two and three seeds will play each other. And then the two winners advance to the finals and both of those schools will go onto the state tournament. The winner hosts the first round and the loser has to travel.”
Paul Lindstrom, the Wolves athletic director and the assistant principal at Newsome, said he is enthusiastic about the spring athletic season.
“We have a good group of seniors,” Lindstrom said. “We have some strong senior pitching we are going to rely on. We do have some young athletes that are baseball players who are starting to make a difference and come into their own as well.”
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