JJC Softball Coach of the Year: 100 wins and counting

Before the 2008 season, Ty Gebhardt had never coached a team that won a regional title, let alone a sectional title. His softball teams had never won a conference title, either.

Then, in one dream season, Gebhardt accomplished all those things. The Virginia/A-C Central softball coach led his team to a 29-5 record and a super-sectional berth.

Nearly every school record was shattered by Gebhardt’s 2008 squad.

“It was amazing,” the coach said. “We had never had anything like that in school history, at either school.”

Gebhardt, a Virginia graduate who earned his 100th career coaching victory this season, takes little credit for his team’s accomplishments. “It’s a great group of girls going through our school system right now,” he said.

Gebhardt’s players, however, said their coach was key to the team’s success.

“He never let us get down. He would always tell us to keep our heads up and never get down on ourselves,” said junior shortstop Brittany Parks.

“He’s given advice to every one of us after making an error or making a mistake.”

Said second baseman Megan Bergerud, “He’s a great coach. He can relate to the players a lot and we can joke around, but he can crack down when he needs to.”

Gebhardt is the Journal-Courier’s Softball Coach of the Year.

“It’s pretty nice when you win your conference outright, then you win your first regional, then you win your first sectional,” the coach said. “Then you make it to supers, and I got my 100th win this year, too, and it was just a season to remember.”

Most teams this spring were forced to deal with cold, wet weather that forced pre-season practices indoors. Gebhardt didn’t waste the practice time, using a series of hitting stations to prepare his players for the time when they would step into the batter’s box once the season started. “We stress hitting a lot,” Gebhardt said.

The practice produced results. Virginia had the best team batting average among local schools, including eight players who hit over .300, three who hit over .400 and another who hit over .500.

“We take a hundred-and-some swings a day,” Gebhardt said. “We’ve got eight or nine stations that we do every single day the first two weeks before we start. We get those stations done, and then we go right into infield and outfield.”

Virginia won its first five games of the season, including a 2-1 win over regional rival Pleasant Plains, before dropping a 2-0 decision to Greenfield.

But a little over a week later, the Lady Redbirds topped Greenfield, 4-1, in what Gebhardt figures is only the second or third win over Greenfield in school history.

That’s when Gebhardt started to believe his team could make a deep postseason run. “Everything just clicked after that,” he said.

Virginia won nine of its next 10 games, using the pitching trio of Taylor Jokisch, Kayla Birdsell and Sammy Petefish. But Gebhardt settled on Jokisch as the team’s starting pitcher, moving Birdsell to center field shortly after.

Considering the team’s success using a rotation of pitchers, the move could have backfired. So why fix something that wasn’t broken?

“We were a lot more comfortable with Taylor — she didn’t walk as many girls as the others did — and we were more comfortable with Birdsell in center field,” Gebhardt said. “We decided to go with Jokisch and it worked out great.

“I think it made our team a lot better.”

Virginia didn’t lose another game to a conference opponent the rest of the year, and Jokisch finished the regular season with a perfect 15-0 pitching record.

“He’s definitely responsible for some of our wins,” Parks said. “He made smart moves.”

During the stretch run, Gebhardt often consulted with his dad, John Gebhardt, who preceded his son as coach of the Lady Redbirds.

“He’s always in the crowd, and he still tries to tell me what to do every now and then. I keep telling him that my teams are better than his teams, but it’s a great conversation,” said the younger Gebhardt. “We talk after every game, and if he isn’t at the game, he’s calling me on the phone to see how we did.”

The coach is already looking forward to next season, when he’ll return all but three starters. Gebhardt originally thought next year would be the year his team put together a record-breaking campaign.

Turns out his prediction was one year off.

“It was a great feeling and I’ll never forget it,” Gebhardt said of the 2008 season. “I think a lot of things like this could happen for the next couple years.”