EARL WATT
• Leader & Times
For some, getting 200 wins is a monumental moment, but for Liberal coach Eric Olmstead, he said it was more like a burden being lifted.
Olmstead began coaching the Redskins in 2007, and with no baseball games played in the COVID year of 2020, he has been at the helm for 18 seasons.
“You get a monkey off your back,” Olmstead said after the Redskins battled back for a come-form-behind win over Woodward, Okla., Thursday, 11-10.
“The kids knew about it, and they wanted to be a part of it,” Olmstead said. “My family supports me and let me do this for 18 years. That’s a lot of wins. But that’s a lot of losses, too.”
Olmstead has worked to raise the bar of Redskin baseball since taking the helm which included summer programs.
“We’ve asked the players and their families to do a lot,” he said. “Whether it was the Bulldogs, Rattlers, playing with other teams — I’m proud of the kids. We aren’t having a very good year, but we are so close to being a really good team.”
Another part of the success has been developing a culture that makes the baseball team its own family.
“We get along so well,” Olmstead said. “We have a great culture. We probably tease each other too much, but it’s a good culture. They want to win, they want to play for each other.”
The win that started it all was a victory over Hugoton in 2007, but Olmstead didn’t put a lot of thought into where his career would be headed at the time.
“I was young,” he said. “I know it was Hugoton, but I don’t recall much more than that. I was a 30-year-old guy. I do remember 100. My wife was graduating from college. She went back, and her graduation was the same day. We had to drive to Wichita to get to Baker. It was a win at home against Dodge.”
Win No. 200 was a windy day with struggles to make the routine plays with the wind. Liberal had three errors and Woodward had five.
The Redskins had a 5-1 lead after four innings, but the Boomers pushed six runs across the plate in the fifth. Liberal answered with six in the bottom half of the inning, all with two outs tot ake an 11-9 lead and hold on for the 11-1 win.
“It was a tough day to play defense and pitch,” Olmstead said. “Both teams struggled with the wind just trying to make plays. They got hot. I maybe left Skylar (Hubbard) in a little long, but I wanted to see what we would look like come playoff time. We have a bounce back stat — can we answer? We did so in the bottom of the fifth.”
One of the players that helped Olmstead earn the milestone win was his son Ethan. He has been called into duty as a freshman but has been a solid contributor both on the field and at the plate.
“Normally you don’t have a lot of freshmen playing varsity,” Olmstead said. “They have done well. I really didn’t know if he would play varsity. Coach Shelby talked me into it. And then he said, ‘We are going to throw him in to lead off.’ I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ It’s different when you are a dad. You have to keep your emotions in check.”
While all other programs have had multiple coaches since 2007, Olmstead has been a steadying force for the baseball program.
“One of the reasons we’ve been successful is having assistants like Coach Arnold for 15 years, Coach Hyde back in the day,” Olmstead said. “We have had a lot of stability. We do things with the Rattler programs with Liberal coaches. We ask them to do it a certain way. The transition is then smooth.”
That has helped when combining seven freshmen with seven upper class men on varsity.
“The freshmen already knew our signs, our cut plays, everything,” Olmstead said. “It’s made it so much easier. I want to commend the senior class and two juniors. They’ve taken the little brothers under the wing. You have seven freshmen with seven upper class men, and you wouldn’t know it. They blend, they try to lead by example. The wins and losses don’t look great, but we are playing better baseball. I just want to keep building on the program.”
