By Joshua Nesheiwat

This year, our boy’s baseball season was 0 and 14 … again. But thanks to our new coach, Mr. Coulson, we ended up feeling like winners.

“It’s not about how many times you fail; it’s how many times you get back up,” Mr. Coulson said recently.

The boys sadly kept our 0-and-14 streak from last year, but Mr. Coulson, rather than seeing these as defeat, used it as an opportunity to improve for next year’s team. Because of these losses, Mr. Coulson was able to adapt and find some new drills and warm-ups to help strengthen areas where we might have lacked. This consisted of infield drills where the coach batted a ball to anyone spread out along third base, second base, shortstop, and first. After getting the ball, they would throw it to Eduardo on first, who would throw it to me at home. We also did some base-running drills, basically, us running from home through second and finally to third. While we were running, Mr. Coulson would yell, “CAUGHT!” meaning the hit was caught and you need to tag up to the base.  We also had a special visit from Coach Coulson’s brother, Matt. He taught us really great tips to improve our throwing form and improve the efficiency of our run to and through first.

Mr. Coulson, who lives in Manasquan, taught second and third grade ELA and ran a math pull-out group with second and fourth graders this year.  

“The school is really welcoming and it has a great student and teacher-friendly environment for everyone to grow,” he said.  

Some of Mr. Coulson’s favorite things to pass time are also pretty cool and productive. He likes running, helping out at the local food pantry, and likes visiting our beaches. He also mentioned the love of baseball he had. Big surprise our baseball coach loves baseball, but Mr. Coulson has grown up with the sport all of his life, and also his very first live professional game was actually at the original Yankee Stadium at the age of eight.

To end the season on a high note, Mr. Coulson and Ms. Healy, the softball coach teamed up to organize a whiffle ball game between the two teams, which was awesome. Mr. Coulson didn’t just get pizza and drinks but splurged on eight large Vic’s Pies.

As for next year, “I’m going to look to continue fostering responsibility in the players to work to get better in small, incremental ways so that we can become more competitive with the other teams we play,” Mr. Coulson said.