Interview With Head Baseball Coach George Petik – Part 3 of 3

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Click Here to Read Part 2 of This Interview

Now we will pick up where we left off in Part 3 of our interview with retiring Pompano Beach Head Coach, George Petik.

Anthony : What was it that fueled your passion for coaching this long?

Coach Petik : I love kids and I love to teach. I love to share. And what makes it neat is when I can go out there and work with a player, and work, and work, and work, and go and watch him go out there and do it in a game… man that’s fun. Whether you win or lose. That’s… exciting. I love that. I really do.

Anthony : What are ome of the coaching memories that you have that pop to the top of your head when you think about it?

Coach Petik : ’87 was a big year, State Championship year. We were the First Broward County team to win a state championship and at that time, 40 years at that time (with no Broward Championships), ’87, that was a team that had great kids with great character. Brett Detwieller, who’s a State Trooper right now; Gregg Knowles was 17 and 1; Rich Tunison, the Kraus brothers, they were not just great baseball players, they were great kids. Good Memories.

Yeah, a lot of memories at Gibbons. Ryan Sheeley, you know who’s in the big leagues, going back and forth right now.

I’ll tell you, I never coached him on a team, but Erik Hosmer, you know who Erik Hosmer is, I worked with Erik privately from the time he was 12 years old and to go back and forth, he texted me before he came up to the big leagues, two weeks ago, several weeks ago, that was kinda neat.

Just to see kids go on and be successful, whether it’s in baseball or not. Knowles is a lawyer in Washington DC, I mean just be successful. That’s neat, and have them come and give you a phone call. I’ve had kids Facebook me and say coach, you remember the six p’s? Proper preparation prevents piss poor performance…..

Anthony : My brother told me about them….

Coach Petik : …I tell them to my own kids now. When players say, “I remember that from when you taught me.” That’s nice.

Anthony : What was the most difficult thing about coaching?

Coach Petik : The most difficult thing…..hmm….the most challenging thing was trying to get the role player or the kid that wasn’t the starter or star to buy into team and to get him to believe that his contribution was just as important.

I used to try to paint a picture for the kids and I would say the team is like a big giant puzzle, and when you put a puzzle together sometimes you have big pieces and sometimes you have small pieces, but it takes every single one of those pieces to complete the puzzle. OKay? You’re just as important as the guy over here, who’s batting 3rd or 4th and hits 10 HR’s. Without you doing what you do, we’re not as successful as we could be. That’s the most difficult thing.

You gotta be physiologist, psychiatrist, mommy, daddy, big brother, I mean, you gotta wear a lot of different hats. Often times I get upset when I hear educators think they’re just going out and playing a game, and they don’t learn anything from playing this game. I probably learned more, playing in high school and college on a ball field, on a baseball team, about life than I ever did in a classroom. And maybe I could share, hopefully I could share that stuff with all these kids over all these years.

Anthony : How hard is it to get administration to buy into that theory?

Coach Petik : (Laughing) It depends on who the administrators are. At Nova, John LaCasse is the principal, he’s a former baseball coach at Piper, he understands. Some of these kids, the only reason they come to school, is because of sports. And that’s your hook. Some administrators don’t buy into that at all, because maybe they weren’t athletes or maybe they were the ones the athletes made fun of when they were kids, whatever, but sports are your hook. And if you can get kids on campus for whatever reason, what difference does it make?

Anthony : If you were over-seeing High School baseball in Broward County, obviously a lot has changed with all the budget cuts, but what changes would you make to the current structure?

Coach Petik: Wow. Well I don’t know if it’s Broward County, but the state controls who’s in the districts. I probably would, and you say well you’ve been on both ends of the spectrum, public school and private school; I’d probably go to the private school/public school separation. I’ve been on both ends and the private schools have so many more advantages, in attracting kids. It’s almost unfair. I’d probably go with that.

One that comes to mind immediately, the rest of the state plays 25, Broward County plays 20 games and they say well, a lot of coaches and booster clubs say well, if we raise our own money what difference does it make? And then they say, “well there are some schools that can’t raise money and you know, well, we’re going to cater to these here, and hurt those over there.” If they have an opportunity to do it, so be it. You know that’s kinda like welfare or you know, we’re gonna take money from the rich and give it down here to the poor, and if we can’t do that, nobody plays. Nobody gets anything. That’s disappointing.

I used to be the representative in District 3 for Baseball America, we did the top 25 in the Nation of High School and there were eight of us throughout the country, my region was Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Alabama, you would see records like 40 and 10, and 35 and 20, because they play dates. They have a certain number of dates they could play and if they have got the pitching, they could play double headers. I know some that would play three games in a day. Okay, but they play dates. Where in Florida, which has probably as much talent, if not more than California or Texas, and we’re limited to 20 baseball games? You gotta be kidding. Is it that big of an expense, really? Because I think baseball boosters, are very, very active.

You know, that’s a tough one. New York State, I see teams that win 25 games, Cottonville, New York, 30 degree winters. Things like that and we can only play 25, well 20 now, two in a district and maybe 27 tops. Yeah and we keep cutting back and cutting back. How much money are we saving? I don’t think so, I think, it’s one of those things where the powers that be can tell the higher ups, listen we’re cutting the schedule and saving money…

Anthony : How much are you concerned that because of that 20 game schedule that the summer and fall are going to become more important to these kids than their High School teams?

Coach Petik : They already are. They already are. For reasons we talked about. Travel teams or All-Star teams. I pay $2000 for my daughter to play on the Gold Coast Hurricanes, but with that said, she’s in a tournament in Georgia, as soon as schools out she goes to New Jersey, Maryland, to Colorado, her scholarship came because that coach of her’s got an opportunity to see her quite a few times on the Travel team, you know, the summer team. It’s already more important right now.

In the old days, I used to have a fall team at Gibbons but it was relaxation, it was we’re gonna get out and make sure we don’t get too rusty. If we’ve got some pitchers we wanted to try some different things, we do it in the fall ’cause we are not concerned about winning games. That’s the time at Gibbons we prepared for the State Championship. We had 5 switch hitters in the starting line-up. That’s where we practice that. No pressure. Didn’t need to win. Let’s just go out and work on it.

Now it’s competitive. It’s competitive, so you’re going to lose a lot of the kids that if they were to get an opportunity just to go out without that added pressure, they could get 30, 40, 50 at bats under their belt in the fall, maybe more. They might develop into something that’s pretty good come spring time.

Anthony : How have you as a coach changed over the years?

Coach Petik : Oh geez, mellowed! (Laughing) Mellowed Tremendously. Oh my gosh! When I came from Okeechobee to Cardinal Gibbons, man it was the Marine Core. It was Boot Camp. It was boom boom boom, from your stir-ups are going to be this size, shoes will be brushed clean for practice time, I’ve mellowed. And I’ve had to, just to be able to get along cause that’s what society has done.

Anthony : Other than with your children, how else do you plan on spending this free time you’re going to have?

Coach Petik : Children’s’ the biggest. Family. Maybe travel a little bit. Maybe go some places and do some things that I haven’t gotten an opportunity to do.

I got a thing the other day on Facebook about a High School Reunion, 40 years, in October. I’ve never been back after 40 years, this is the moment too, ’cause I was always doing something coaching related. So yeah, catch up on; catch up on a lot of things. Maybe just stop and smell the roses a little bit.

You know people are having heart attacks, people are dying of Cancer. It’s time to restore friendships. Just kick back and relax a little bit.

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