By IAN WILSON
Jim Kotkas knows the difference a good coach can make.
And after witnessing such people first-hand as a player, he became one.
However, that coaching path nearly never materialized for Kotkas, who grew up in Lethbridge with a father who ran a sporting goods store.
His first foray into organized sports came on a baseball field, but the early returns were less than inspiring.
“I had my lunch fed to me. It was not a fun experience,” recalled Kotkas.
“We’d never played anything up until that point. I played Little League and the team I was on was loaded with twelve year olds and I was nine.”
Kotkas finished the season, begrudgingly, and set his sights on another sport.
“I played a year of soccer and I thought my baseball career was done. It was nothing special, I didn’t really enjoy the time I was doing it,” he said.
As it turned out, he was just getting started in baseball, and the reason for that became clear when he received a visit from Stu Dow, one of the baseball coaches in Lethbridge.
“One day, one of the Little League coaches that saw me the year prior came to my house and sat down with me and my mom and dad, and said that I am going to play baseball as an 11-year-old … he basically changed the path of my career and my life. I don’t know what he saw, he saw something,” said Kotkas, whose interest was refreshed for a return to the outfield.
“I didn’t know the gentleman real well at the time. He didn’t even coach me. He was another coach on another team – the only thing I can think of is my arm strength was my strongest tool. He must’ve saw something as a nine-year-old with how I threw a baseball.”
With that, Kotkas was ready for a return to the diamond.
BACK TO THE BALLPARK
He and his teammates competed at the national championship tournament when he was 11, and they followed that up with a Canadian title in 1977 and a trip to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania when he was 12 years old.
“That’s when everything kind of took off. Baseball was cool, we had some great experiences. There was a core nucleus of guys who grew up together,” remembered Kotkas.
“It was just a group of guys that ate, dreamt, slept baseball.”
That core represented Canada at the Senior Little League World Series in Gary, Indiana in 1979, where they took the field against a Florida team that included future Major League Baseball (MLB) stars Dwight Gooden, Floyd Youmans and Vance Lovelace.
The Lethbridge nucleus – which also captured two Montana State American Legion championships in the early 1980s – featured first baseman Greg Duce (1986 NAIA College World Series MVP; 1988 Olympian); second sacker Brad Harvie (who led Vanderbilt University in homers in 1986 and 1987); outfielder Scott Maxwell (an 8th-round draft pick of the New York Yankees in 1985, who played pro ball with the Medicine Hat Blue Jays in 1986); and, of course, Kotkas.
After high school, Kotkas had his own baseball aspirations.
He attended the College of Southern Idaho (CSI), where he won the National Junior College (JUCO) World Series as a sophomore.
From there, he tried out for Team Canada’s 1984 Olympic squad. When it came down to the last few roster positions, the coaches wanted a left-handed hitter but Kotkas was a righty batter, so the spot went to his friend Scott Maxwell instead.
BASEBALL TAKES A BACKSEAT
Kotkas decided to step away from baseball, despite some opportunities that emerged from his two years at CSI.
“I had some really good offers to go move on and I quit. I enrolled in the University of Lethbridge,” said Kotkas, who shifted his focus to an education degree.
At this point, another coach intervened. This time it was Jim’s father, Ken, who had become a familiar face around southern Alberta ball diamonds, where he instructed youth baseball players about the fundamentals of the sport.
“My dad took me for a drive that summer when I didn’t make the senior team for the ’84 Olympics and he said: ‘I’m not going to tell you what to do. You’re old enough to make your own decisions, but just absolutely promise me right now that ten years from now, or five years from now, you’re not going to look back, sitting in a bar, telling people how good you were when you still had two years of eligibility left,'” remembered Jim of the fatherly advice.
“That kind of stuck with me. He hit a nerve there.”
Within a week, one of his CSI Golden Eagle teammates reached out about the Southern Utah State University baseball program. They were looking for an outfielder.
Shortly after he signed on at his new university, Kotkas received a letter from Baseball Canada with an invite to a summer camp.
CANADA CALLING
“Everything happened after that decision. There was another defining moment of my career. I stepped away from the sport and thought I was hanging ’em up, and just going to become an educator, a teacher from the University of Lethbridge,” said Kotkas.
“From that point on, I played in the Olympics, traveled the world, circled the world, played in I don’t know how many different countries. That was cool. It was an amazing experience. The ’80s treated me well with a lot of stuff that went on in my baseball career.”
Among the highlights of that decade of international experience was a pair of Intercontinental Cup appearances, playing time at the 1987 Pan-American Games, two Pacific Cup tournaments, and the opportunity to represent Canada at the 1988 Baseball World Cup, as well as the Summer Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea.
Kotkas was clutch during Canada’s only victory at those Olympics, an 8-7 upset win over the United States. He delivered a two-run single with two outs in the fourth inning that sparked a four-run rally for Canada that gave the Canucks the lead.
“Every time I stand for the national anthem it takes me back to some of those days when I was standing on the third base line at some of those events where you’re representing your country. I can remember multiple times flying across Canada, going to the camps or to where I was going, looking down, going over cities and thinking, I’m one baseball player in twenty representing everybody that’s below me here. It was kind of an out of body experience,” said Kotkas.
“Everything just kind of fell into place, just because of work ethic and dedication and, I guess, God-given ability on the end of it. I will never forget that experience and just the pride to wear Canada across your chest.”
STUDENT BECOMES THE TEACHER
While his playing days wound down, Kotkas maintained an interest in education. He received his teaching degree from Southern Utah State University, an endeavour that required him to finish his schooling with a practicum.
In 1988, Kotkas requested an assignment close to home and got that in the form of a posting in Picture Butte, where he taught and coached the high school baseball team alongside Scott Oikawa. In addition to his duties in Picture Butte, Oikawa was embarking on a decades-long coaching tenure with the Lethbridge Elks American Legion squad. Kotkas soon teamed up with Oikawa on that path.
“I knew absolutely I was going to coach with Scotty in the Legion program. Since 1992, me and Scott have been together,” said Kotkas, who found switching from playing to coaching a natural progression.
“It was just a smooth transition – that competitiveness never really leaves you. And being able to make a difference and help kids, mentor, tutor, to kind of have a taste of what you did a thousand years ago.”
While he was with the Elks, Kotkas befriended another coach who made a significant impact on his life and his career. Les McTavish – who was pitching for the Lethbridge Bulls in their first seasons as a franchise – served as the pitching coach for the Elks in the late 1990s.
IN IT FOR THE VAUXHALL
The pair embarked on an ambitious journey when the Vauxhall Academy of Baseball was launched and they were announced as coaches.
“I think we’ll work hand-in-hand and we both get along well off the field and understand each other,” McTavish told the Lethbridge Herald at an introductory press conference in February of 2006.
Kotkas didn’t know what to expect out of the venture, but he knew it was something he had to pursue.
“The opportunity when Vauxhall decided to do a baseball academy, we talked together, like, ‘We can do this, let’s give it a whirl.’ I give so much credit to that first group of athletes that we had,” recalled Kotkas, who has two adult children with his wife, Darci.
“We really didn’t know ourselves what it was going to look like or how it was going to shape up … when we started we had no credibility in the baseball world. It was like, ‘Vauxhall what?’ From day one, it was not about winning. It was about development and class. If one of our players turns around and looks at an umpire wrong, that isn’t happening. It’s just 100% you play the game with class.”
The academy provides high school students with a taste of dorm life, preparing them for university living by giving them residence at the school and direct access to baseball facilities and classrooms. For several years, however, students initially lived with billet families in and around Vauxhall.
“To me it’s the perfect storm. Now we have dorms that are actually attached to our school. They just walk through the weight room and they’re in the school,” said Kotkas.
“They can access the gymnasium, the weight room, whenever they want. You walk right across the crosswalk on the street, our ball diamond’s right there. I’m sitting in the school right now and I can throw a baseball into the stadium from where I’m sitting. Right beyond the outfield fence is our indoor complex.”
As the years have gone by, the program has gained respect, as have its graduates and the coaching staff.
Kotkas looks at a couple of current prospects in the Toronto Blue Jays organization as evidence of what Vauxhall’s student-athletes can achieve after they leave southern Alberta.
Lefty pitcher Adam Macko – who came to the Blue Jays in a trade with Seattle that sent outfielder Teoscar Hernandez to the Mariners last offseason – is the No. 9 ranked prospect in the system. The Slovakian-born southpaw will begin the 2024 season at Double-A with the New Hampshire Fisher Cats.
Corner infielder Damiano Palmegiani, meanwhile, is the 14th-ranked prospect for the Jays. He climbed the minor-league ranks to the Triple-A level last year, where he suited up in 20 games for the Buffalo Bisons. Palmegiani will start the season in Buffalo again and look to crack the big-league roster at some point this year.
“The player that probably stands out the most to me would be Adam Macko … Adam is the only player I’ve ever been around where I said, ‘I can see him in the big leagues.’ Just the way he handled himself around us for three years and how the bigger the moment, the bigger he got, which is kind of unlike a lot of Canadian kids,” noted Kotkas
“Damiano’s making a great run, but Dami’s had a different path than Adam. He’s taken a few knocks and keeps getting back up, so credit to Damiano.”
AWARD WINNERS
The Vauxhall Academy of Baseball held their annual awards banquet in early March, where Kotkas – who goes by the nickname “Coack K” – was added to the school’s Wall of Excellence for his longstanding service as a teacher and a coach with the program.
“It’s a tremendous honour, but I’ve never done any of this stuff to get those honours,” said Kotkas, who in 1987 was the recipient of Baseball Canada’s Jimmy Rattlesnake Award for outstanding ability and sportsmanship.
“To me, it’s just a byproduct of trying to be a good person and doing things the right way and trying to make an impact.”
Joining Kotkas on the Wall of Excellence is Bob Miller, who has been instrumental in making improvements to Jets Stadium, as well as other baseball facilities in Vauxhall.
Students who took home awards included Jacob Burgess and Jack Baxter (Sports Connection Scholarship); Jimmie Boulanger (Blaine Burbank Coaches Award); as well as Alex Laurence and Callum Thomson (Adam Nelubowich Award).
Brett Getz won the Reno Lizzi Scholarship, whose past recipients include Garrett Hawkins, Ty Penner, Adam Macko and Cardel Dick.
“It was an exciting moment because I knew how much of an honour it was to receive it,” said Getz, adding coach McTavish frequently tells stories about Macko, Hawkins and the other winners.
“You just hear how good of people they were, on and off the field, and winning an award that both of them won means I’m kind of on the right path and hopefully one day I’ll have stories told about me at this place.”
Spoken like a well-coached athlete.
