By Mike Hoey
Correspondent
The Lake Geneva Badger baseball team is coached by the tag team of Mike Ploch and Beau Roddy, both Badger graduates, former players in the program, and coaches on the staff under Aaron Zweifel. Zweifel resigned at the end of last season.
Ploch said he remembered exactly how the idea of co-coaching with Roddy came up. Ploch, a special education teacher at Badger, said during his first year of teaching at Badger that he commented to Roddy, also a special education teacher, that he wouldn’t mind taking over the program one day. Roddy said he had the same dream, so they looked at each other and decided they would do it together if the opportunity ever arose.
“I knew how effortless it would be to run the baseball program with Ploch,” Roddy said. “He is the yin to my yang.”
Roddy said he and Ploch approach the game from different angles but mutually meet in the middle.
Ploch was the JV coach for two years and assisted at the freshman level before that for three years. Roddy has coached the freshman team for ten years and has also been an assistant coach for cross country for eight years. Ploch is in his fourth year teaching at Badger, Roddy is in his eighth.
The Badgers are coming off a 10-12 season (8-6 Southern Lakes Conference) and are projected to finish near the bottom of the conference this year. Ploch said player buy-in will be key to finishing higher than that.
“Our program is designed around creating a positive, fun, and winning culture that brings the community together,” Ploch said.
Ploch said no one is better at that kind of thing than Roddy, who has a way of bringing people and teams together…
Read more of what the coaches had to say in the April 4 Lake Geneva Times.
