1 week Ago
Dirk Thomas remembers one of the biggest moments of his team’s playoff run in 2015. It was the district finals or sometime late in the playoffs, Wando’s number three pitcher was scheduled to start. Thomas was dragging the field before.
Shortly afterward, the starting pitcher came from the bullpen. “He said he felt something in his arm. and he couldn't go,” the head coach said.
With his number one and number two pitchers already through their turns in the rotation, the head coach had come up with a starter 15 minutes before game time. “We threw a little one of our relievers, a little sidearm reliever, Ethan Keane, came in, he always was like [throwing] 75, 70 (mph), nothing really hard. and he just shuts [them] down.
and we went [on to win] a close game,” the head coach said. Principal Chas Coker remembers the experience of when he was an assistant principal traveling with varsity on the trip to the state championship series. “Looking at the impact it has on me today .
.. it was a very cool experience just to be able to see the boys achieve that and to be able to see them be celebrated on the field.
And to know that [we] hopefully have a small impact on their lives for the next years to come and for me...
it was all smile. It was really special, and for me to me it help build some lifelong relationships with the kids,” Coker said, Today, Coker loves seeing his former players from both junior varsity and varsity teams and the people they've become. I'll still see them to this day either out in the grocery store or back at baseball games or around town and see the lawyers and managers and workers that they've become.
It's been really cool to kind of see them when I first met them when they were 13 years old, become grown adults and have real jobs and families, and it's been awesome,” Coker said. Coker highlighted the camaraderie in which the team had back in 2015, helped them ultimately gel together and grow throughout the season in route to their state championship. “Obviously, the team had a lot of talent, a lot of the boys went off to college and played ball elsewhere, but I think what really held that [team] through was the relationships that they had with each other; and Coach Thomas did a fantastic job of fostering that and building hard work ethic and being able to succeed whenever challenges [came their way],” Coker said.
Now 10 years after winning a state championship in baseball, Coker did not hesitate to answer his phone with calls from current players’ parents regarding an event honoring their longtime head coach because of the impact he has had on the baseball program. At the event, alumni from the 2015 4A State Championship team were recognized and Dirk Thomas was given a plaque in honor of the 10-year anniversary by the seniors of this year's team. Chas Coker threw out the game's first pitch.
“I think for him it’s just the impact he's had on the whole community, the impact he's had here at Wanda baseball. I mean, being a coach here for over 13 years, he's impacted a lot of young men, impacted the school for the positive and more than just the success on the field, the character that he's built into young men all across Mount Pleasant. There's not many people I can run into that don't have something nice to say about Coach Thomas or some positive impact they've had on him.
So I think it's a great way to honor him in his legacy here at Wando High School,” Coker said. Coker says he plans to honor other impactful Wando people of the community in the future. “I think one of the biggest things we're starting here shortly as an athletic program is we're trying to get a community together, start a hall of fame to honor the past legacies of people that have come through Wando and the support they've had to Wando and their achievements here,” Coker said.
Thomas said his team's ability to play for each other was a key ingredient that helped the team to win state. “The unselfishness and true sincerity in other people’s success(es) whether they’re playing or weren’t playing. If someone else was having success the other people won.
The team were genuinely happy for those little people having success,” Thomas said. Thomas loved his relief pitcher’s confidence and perseverance in a game during their playoff run which propelled them to the state championship series against J.L.
Mann. Wando’s head coach fondly reflected of his team’s response to missing their original starting pitcher for that game, but was especially proud of his relief pitcher for answering the bell. “I was more happy for Ethan than that guy who came in and that situation.
I was also happy and so proud of him,” the head coach said. Earlier in the season, Wando had lost senior outfielder Kep Brown who suffered a ruptured Achilles. The head coach touched on his team’s effort despite the loss of their supposed best player and one of the top ranked players in the state and considered a future first to second round pick in the 2015 MLB draft.
“That's was our best player, we are losing for the season. and not to say we're gonna lose, but we it's like that we got better, because other people stepped up. They didn't feel sorry for themselves and it was I was really, really proud of them,” Thomas said.
Thomas cherishes the memory of winning a state championship as a coach, expressing the rarity of the achievement and all the emotions he carries with him today. “Anytime I see a celebration, whether it's hockey or baseball or something on TV, and I see that dog pile on things like that, I can close my eyes and I can go back to that moment. I get goosebumps and stuff like that, and that's something that never, ever, ever, ever can be taken from me or any of our players at that moment,” Thomas said.
With all the success earned by the Warriors in 2015, Thomas also explained that to win a state championship it took some fortune. “Lucky, what you say it's all about skilling players and stuff like that, but you gotta get lucky. We caught a few breaks with some umpire calls along the way and things like that.
And not to take things for granted and embrace them." Thomas addresses his players at the end of every season with the same life teaching goal: Teaching his team how to become great men and fathers. “We talk about that at our stars' banquet every year.
Every class, no matter how successful a season was, that is your true measure of success, my true measure of success isn't on what we've done. It's five years, seven years, 10 years. When you come back, what kind of man you become, what kind of father you become? You know, because the chances of them playing Major League Baseball, there's always a chance, but there's probably a greater chance at some point than being a father, and .
.. there's nothing more important than being a father.
I mean, if we can teach them to be good fathers and good men, then we've got a great job,” Thomas said..
