BANGOR, Maine — The John Bapst baseball team will open its 2015 regular season against defending Eastern Maine Class B champion Caribou Saturday with a youthful roster and a new coach in Jason O’Reilly.
O’Reilly, a former catcher at Columbia University who teaches U.S. history at the Bangor school, replaces Dave Gonyar, who opted not to return after guiding the Crusaders for the last three seasons.
Eight senior starters graduated from year’s club, which finished 8-9 and lost to Old Town in the Eastern B prelims.
But with more than 30 players on John Bapst’s varsity and junior varsity teams this spring, O’Reilly likes the atmosphere surrounding the program.
“We really only have a couple of kids with experience at the varsity level so I knew this was going to be a pretty inexperienced team,” said O’Reilly, whose club will host Caribou in a doubleheader at noon Saturday at the Winkin Complex on the campus of Husson University.
“But I’ve been very pleasantly surprised with where we’re at. The kids have been working hard, there’s a great vibe around the program and it’s been a nice surprise to see some of the younger guys who are sophomores and juniors stepping up and wanting to learn and wanting to play.”
O’Reilly, who has taught at John Bapst since 2005, was a two-time all-state selection while playing at New London (Connecticut) High School. He went on the play at Columbia from 1996 to 1999, and also played one summer in the New England Collegiate Baseball League.
He came to Maine in 2001, teaching and serving as an assistant baseball coach at Nokomis Regional High School in Newport for four years before coming to John Bapst.
More recently O’Reilly had coached at the youth level in Hampden and Holbrook.
Now he’s looking forward to returning to the high school baseball scene this spring with a roster led by four seniors and a large junior class.
“The thing that’s pretty encouraging to me is that we’ve got some kids who haven’t played really since middle school who are now sophomores and juniors and have decided to give it a go again,” he said. “That’s been a pretty nice feeling to have those kids want to play again.”
John Bapst enters its season opener coming off a scrimmage victory over Central of Corinth earlier this week.
“The kids are working and they’re learning and we’re getting ourselves into a nice little groove here,” said O’Reilly. “It’s definitely a work in progress, but I like where we’re at.”
