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Paul thriving in his opportunity with Jets baseball

Jeffers baseball coach Luke Paul checks out the situation for his team on the bases during their semifinal game of the Division 4 District 97 tournament Friday against Ironwood at Stanton Field. (Daver Karnosky/Daily Mining Gazette)

STANTON — The Jeffers varsity boys’ baseball team has been on quite the hot streak this season, with only one loss so far. The former head coach of Finlandia University’s baseball team, Luke Paul, has been happy with how his current position as Jeffers’ head coach has been going so far this season.

He explained the differences between the two levels. 

“It’s a little bit different because you don’t really dive so hard into the specifics of everything. You’re keeping everything really simple,” Paul explained.  

“Then later in the year, we start expanding where we get a little bit closer to the Finlandia gameplay but at the end of the day these guys are here to have fun, so it’s the same in some aspects but we want to make sure these guys are having fun and enjoying their time on the baseball field,” he added.

As far as his coaching technique, he tends to focus on the same aspects of gameplay that he did while coaching at the college level. 

“Our big thing is our hitting and our pitchers. To be good at this game, you’ve gotta throw strikes. We focus on coming to the plate too and making sure we have a good mental mind game at the plate and making sure to swing at pitches we can hit. Especially at the lower level, a lot of guys like swinging at those high pitches and whatever’s at their eye level, so we make sure we have a good approach at the plate and swing at pitches that we can hit. That’s really big here at the high school level,” he said. 

Although different from his previous position in many ways, Paul has been thriving at the high school level. He mentioned that his favorite part of being a high school coach is the lead-up to districts and all of the anticipation during these games.  

“The guys really look forward to this all year,” he said. “The games are a little bit harder. You know, we play these guys all season and even if we’ve won every game leading up to it, you never know what’s gonna happen at districts. It makes the games a lot more fun when they’re close in score.”

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