Timing seems right for Nichols, who gets baseball head job

GILMAN BASEBALL

The thought of coaching had been in his mind for some time and with the group he’s helped coach for a half-dozen years or so now hitting high school, the timing of Gilman’s baseball head coach position opening up seemingly couldn’t have been better for Derek Nichols.

The 2003 Gilman graduate officially became the school district’s choice to take over the program during the July 17 board meeting. He replaces Dave Kroeplin, who stepped down following the 2023 season after four unique seasons in the position. Assistant coach Justin Young also resigned at year’s end.

Nichols was hired the same night Tyler Pockat was tabbed to fill the boys basketball head coaching position. They, along with Cory Halida, the new middle school football coach and high school basketball assistant, as well as Phil Angell have spent a lot of time together in recent years bringing the next crew of Pirates through the youth ranks, with some success.

Now it will be interesting to see how they continue to progress at the high school level.

“It’s pretty cool,” Nichols said Monday of taking over the program he once played for. “I’ve kind of always thought about doing it. I know one year, probably about 10 years or so ago, I helped Robin (Rosemeyer) a little bit when he coached baseball. I’ve always kind of thought I’ve wanted to do it. I guess now is my chance. We’ll see how it goes.

“I don’t think there’s a better time to get into it.”

Nichols was a three-sport Pirate during his high school career. He earned two first-team All-Western Cloverbelt awards in baseball and two first-team Small Cloverbelt awards in football and played basketball as well.

He was a sophomore on the last Gilman Pirate baseball team to reach the sectional level of WIAA tournament play back in 2001. That team beat Rib Lake 5-1 in the sectional semifinal at Prentice but then lost 13-3 to Prairie Farm in the final, a game Nichols was the starting pitcher in.

“I remember getting rocked,” he joked. A look into the archives shows that game actually was closer than the final score indicates as it got away from the Pirates in the last two innings.

Of course getting Gilman back to a level where it can compete to return to a sectional tournament in the next few seasons would be one of the goals for the new coach and his new players. Nichols expects the program will have a young look to it to start with, but that gives the team room to grow and build.

“Hopefully we can find some consistency,” Nichols said. “Hopefully play some good defense, get some good pitching going. It’ll be a young team. The biggest thing will be to get a different culture going on where kids will want to go out for baseball. Hopefully we can win some games. I know numbers have been down for awhile.”

The last four years under Kroeplin and Young weren’t exactly ordinary for Gilman baseball. The 2020 season, of course, was canceled due to the Covid pandemic. That was followed by the WIAA’s altered spring season of 2021 where Gilman formed a co-op with Thorp. In 2022, the Pirates only played a JV schedule due to a lack of numbers. Gilman got back to varsity baseball this past spring and went 3-11 overall and 2-10 in the Eastern Cloverbelt Conference. All three wins came against Greenwood.

Nichols said he’s still waiting to hear who his assistant coach will be.

“I think there’s a good group of kids there that hopefully we can be competitive with at some point,” Nichols said. “The freshmen class I’ve been with them since they were about 8, ever since Tball. The sophomore class I’ve coached a little bit here and there. It has been fun through the years. Hopefully we can continue that.”

Nichols and his wife Becky live in Gilman and have two boys, Connor, who will be a freshman, and Sawyer, who will enter sixth grade this fall.

Nichols continued to play baseball after graduating, competing in the Dairyland League with the Whittlesey Reds through the summer of 2022. An infielder and pitcher as a high schooler, Nichols actually found his niche as a catcher with the Reds.

“I think they tried me (at catcher) a couple of times in high school, but it really didn’t pan out that good,” he said. “This is the first year I haven’t played in a long time. I know people had told me to play as long you could and I played awhile. Now we’re so busy with kids’ stuff.”