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Bumgardner One Of The Good Guys In The Sport

CHILLICOTHE - As Gene Bumgardner finished talking about what his years as a baseball coach has been like, his wife chimed in with vital information.

“He forgot to tell you kids that were not the best on his teams were some of the ones that he was closest to,” Robin Bumgardner pointed out.

One of those was Andy Helton, who played for Bumgardner during his nine-year tenure at Piketon.

“He was the worst player I ever coached,” explained Bumgardner, who is stepping away from the sport after serving as an assistant as well as head coach at three different high schools since the 1996-97 school year. “He should never have been on a baseball field. I remember I tried to put him in to play on Senior Night but he was 1-for-1 on the season and didn’t want to go in. He wanted the highest batting average in school history.”

Helton, who was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease going into his senior year of high school, has high praise for his former coach.

“He was absolutely awesome,” noted the 2015 Piketon graduate, a four-year starter in soccer (a sport Helton went on to coach for four years) who earned three varsity letters in baseball. “Gene was such a big impact on my life. I could always go to him. I still talk to him all the time. 

“His character, his morals …, he was just awesome. I couldn’t ask to have a better coach,” continued Helton, who was hit by a pitch and doubled in his lone two plate appearances as a high school senior. “I remember I got cut from basketball and he said he wasn’t cutting me. He said you’re on varsity. I wasn’t that good at baseball, but I got them pumped up.”

Helton remembers Senior Night well.

“He tried to put me in but I wanted to win that game,” Helton reflected. “He ended up playing me one inning in the outfield.”

But for the most part Helton’s contributions to the team came in another way.

“My role was to pump everyone up,” Helton said. “I’d give pre-game speeches and post-game speeches. It wasn’t about playing, I just wanted to go and be around nice people.”

Building a relationship with players like Helton was the norm for Bumgardner.

“I stay in contact with all my kids,” noted the 55-year-old, who had a kidney transplant in 2017 (doctor said he’d be out 2-3 months but he was back at work in four weeks) and earlier this month had a knee replacement. “They all have jobs, I can tell you that. I think that’s what makes me most proud. They’re gainfully employed and work hard. That doesn’t happen every day in today’s society.”

Dennis Hagerty, who led McDermott Northwest to the state tournament in 1982 and ’83, got Bumgardner started in the baseball coaching ranks as an assistant at Northwest.

“He spoon fed me for a couple of years and I fell in love with the sport,” reflected Bumgardner, who coached football prior to becoming enamoured with baseball. “I played baseball as a kid up until high school but we didn’t have a JV team so I ran track and stayed with it because I was good at it.”

But his adoration and devotion to the game of baseball grew while coaching.

“I love everything about the game,” Bumgardner said. “The strategy, the practicing, I did it year ’round. I coached in the fall, summer, spring and hitting in the winter.”

He coached legion baseball as well as helping initiate a college summer baseball league. Additionally, Bumgardner started junior high baseball in southeast Ohio as well as the First Capital Fall Baseball League which is still running.

In the spring, Bumgardner spent three years as an assistant at Northwest and three at Unioto before becoming head coach at Piketon until 2018, recording a 127-125 record with four sectional and two district championships.

“Our kids came to compete every day,” Bumgardner noted. “We weren’t always the best team but we were fundamentally sound. When I took over we went from three wins to the regional finals in two years. It helped to have an All-American.”

Zach Farmer was not only the best player Bumgardner coached, but he was special.

“He loved the game,” Bumgardner related. “I finally found somebody who loved it as much as I did. He was one of a kind. You don’t get these kinds of kids too often.”

His four years playing varsity were among the most memorable times for Bumgardner.

“We upset the best team in the state in Division III in 2011, St. Clairsville,” Bumgardner said. “That’s one of my highlights as a coach. Farmer just pounded the zone that day. He struck out 17. He was really on that day and we got some timely hits.”

A year after making the regional finals in 2011, Piketon advanced to regionals again but for the third year in a row lost to Wheelersburg, which during a six-year run captured two state titles during that time.

Farmer’s senior season featured the first league championship at Piketon in 51 years.

“We had to beat Unioto to do that and that’s where I taught,” Bumgardner reflected. “Tony Taylor was their coach and we’d eat lunch together every day.”

Farmer went on to play at Ohio State, but passed away in August of 2015 from leukemia at the age of 21.

“That still hurts,” an emotional Bumgardner said in talking about his former star pitcher. “He was like a son. But I can say that about 99 percent of the kids I coached.”

Many of those were sons of friends.

“It was great to go back to Piketon, my home high school,” Bumgardner said. “We had some great seasons there. A lot of the kids were my best friend’s kids.”

Still, it was, admittedly, a challenge according to Bumgardner.

“We didn’t even have matching uniforms when I got there,” Bumgardner said. “It was an embarrassment. The field wasn’t even presentable. But we got that fixed to the point the kids took a lot of pride in it.”

Currently the Second Vice President of the Ohio High School Baseball Coaches Association, Bumgardner has seen a lot of changes in the game during his time in the sport.

“It’s definitely become more pitching dominant,” Bumgardner noted. “Travel ball has also become way more important than it was. When I first started it wasn’t as precedent but now legion ball is falling away and high school coaches don’t have as much influence as they had.

“I think high school should always have some input, but travel ball coaches are becoming more important,” Bumgardner added. “It’s not necessarily a bad thing, though. Kids want to go to college and those kids want to listen to their travel coach more than their high school coach.”

Prep Baseball Report has also entered the picture.

“I feel it’s just one more tool to help players and families get exposure,” Bumgardner said of PBR benefitting the recruiting process of high school baseball players. “Many kids may not have the money to play on travel teams that go to larger tournaments where most college and pro scouts are attending, so PBR gives these kids an opportunity to showcase their talents by attending a couple events that are held around the state.”

Hitting is another area of the game that has changed.

“We always tried to work the backside,” Bumgardner related. “We told kids everyone can pull the ball, good hitters hit backside. We were always more of a contact hitting team instead of a power hitting team, even the good teams we had.”

His time at Piketon came to an end in 2018 and, fittingly, his coaching days came full circle with a return to Unioto as an assistant.

“I wasn’t winning at the end and was non-renewed,” Bumgardner said. “So being good friends with Tony, he asked me back.”

Surrounding yourself with good assistants is advice he would pass along to any head coach in the game.

“Find some old coaches and stick like glue to them,” Bumgardner said. “I had Dennis Hagerty and Tony Taylor. They’ve been invaluable in taking me to places I wouldn’t have gone.”

Being away from the game will not be easy for Bumgardner, who also gave credit to coaches Dean Schuler and Tim Martin for mentoring and support during his time as a coach.

“I’m going to miss the game, the kids, the coaches, practices … everything about it,” Bumgardner concluded. “You can always second guess yourself and, sure, I would have liked to win more games, but I wouldn’t change anything about it.”

With eight more years to teach after this school year, Bumgardner is not totally ruling out a return to the game.

“If the right head coaching job came open I’d take it,” Bumgardner said. “But it’s the right time now to step away. I just think I’m ready. I owe it to my wife to give her a little time. When I coached, it was more of a year ’round job for me. I was doing it before it became a year ’round job.”

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