STAB coach Swanson heads to New York

Casey Lambert was not the first — and will not be the last — to look at the baseball field at St. Anne’s-Belfield and stare in awe upon first glance.

Typically, high school baseball facilities are not supposed to live up to their title as a diamond.

Yet when Lambert elected to transfer across the mountain from Harrisonburg to STAB with two years of eligibility remaining some seven years ago, he began thinking what spending seven innings at the picturesque ballpark would be encompass.

Now at the Double-A level with a farm club of the Chicago Cubs, Lambert is quick to point the finger towards the ringleader.

Day after day, night after night, STAB’s veteran baseball coach, Alan Swanson, would grab a rake, drag the field or simply master a minor task in search of providing his players with their own “Field of Dreams.”

Those days are in the past.

Long before the Saints embarked on what equated into a 16-win campaign this season that stretched into the state semifinals, Swanson had told school officials that he would not be returning for the upcoming academic year.

For Swanson and a decade’s worth of winning at the highest level in the private school ranks, it was time to trade in his rake, park his car and test life riding the subway.

“My wife was retiring, we did want to come back to New York and we wanted to try New York City at some point,” Swanson explained from the Big Apple. “Also, the baseball program was in great shape. It was a combination of personal factors, as well as STAB baseball factors.

“Age factored into it for me — coaching is a young man’s game. I am very aware of that. New York is a great place to grow old. I don’t touch my car here — we use the subway, we get around without using a car. It is a great place to do things.”

Still spry enough to hit countless grounders during and after practice, the 57-year-old will turn the reigns of the program over to Eric McGrane, a longtime assistant under Swanson and a former baseball player at Virginia.

While STAB’s coach-in-waiting was among the few who knew about the skipper’s decision to leave Central Virginia, Swanson’s ability to block out the impending departure opened McGrane’s eyes to something he had never witnessed from his mentor.

“I saw a side of him that I was really happy that I got to see before he left,” McGrane said. “He didn’t want the parties, the ‘Farewell Alan’ stuff. He didn’t want the ‘Win one for the Gipper.’

“He just wanted to keep playing good baseball and keep hanging out with the boys. When he finally announced it at the team party people were sad to see him go. He is a very selfless person. He just doesn’t think about himself.”

That constant player-first mentality touched the lives of numerous players.

Trevor Knight, the 2006 Central Virginia Baseball Player of the Year, remembers his first meeting with Swanson vividly as he prepared to transfer from the school system in Greene County.

“I was coming into a new environment and he made me feel very welcome, as did the assistant coaches,” said Knight, a redshirt sophomore who helped lift James Madison into the NCAA Tournament earlier this summer. “Feeling accepted in a new environment is always nice. That’s something huge that he did for me.”

Lambert, the ACC’s all-time saves leader, encountered the same experience, something that only blossomed after he took the mound.

“There is no telling what would have happened with my baseball career had I not transferred there, but I do know that where I have been, it all started for me in my first game at STAB,” the southpaw said. “It opened a lot of doors and it let me play in the backyard of UVa.

“Not only that, but Coach Swanson taught me a lot about the game that I didn’t know before I arrived there and he prepared me for what it is like to play baseball in college and after that. I am just grateful for the opportunity that he gave me to go over there and play for him. I think that really served as a springboard into four years of college and now how many ever years I will have of professional baseball.” 

Swanson also built the Saints’ existing dynasty, one that he credits the administration and former and current boosters for, by fearing no opponent during the annual construction of his schedules.

“He scheduled some big guys such as Greenbrier Christian,” Knight said. “They had [Tampa Bay Rays infielder] B.J. Upton and a lot of scouts would come to those games, not only because Greenbrier had good players, but we also had good players.

“Being a small-name school, Coach Swanson tried to schedule bigger-name schools so we could get our names out as well.”

It worked for Florida State-bound Kyle Long, Knight, Lambert and others, but Swanson took just as much pride in witnessing progression in the skill sets of players destined to ride the pine for a season.

“Every kid is different and some kids work really hard and don’t get much out of it, but they get something out of it,” Swanson said. “That’s really what coaching high school sports is all about — taking what you have and making the most of it.

“As a coach, some kids like you and some kids don’t like you, but when a kid is on the bench and he recognizes that he is getting better and improving and learning something, that’s pretty rewarding.”

Swanson said he and his wife, Donna, expect to get jobs in New York, but he does not anticipate being involved with high school baseball.

“If I were going to stay in coaching, I had the best situation in the world at STAB,” he said. “So if I wanted to stay in coaching, I probably would not have left STAB.

“I loved being a high school baseball coach with this team. I loved being around the kids. They are high energy and they want to do well. As far as my professional career, coaching baseball at STAB was the absolute highlight.”

Quick to admit that watching his returning players from outside the fence would be emotionally challenging, Swanson does hope to see the Saints play in 2009.

“I really love those kids,” he said. “Eric McGrane is more than ready to take over and the seniors that we have coming up are a very responsible group and a talented group, and it just seemed like if you wanted to leave the program at some point and leave the program in good shape, now was the time to do it.”

And thanks to Swanson’s efforts, a true diamond remains with a silky-smooth infield, plush grass and an eye-catching series of title banners hanging to prove it.

Fittingly, the field will be named in Swanson’s honor.

“We had a lot of people who were very interested, and working on the baseball field was a hobby for me,” he said. “We had a lot of good resources and people to help. It truly was fun.

“I didn’t do it because I had to do it; I did it because it was fun and the kids liked playing on a nice field. We always told the kids to leave it better than you found it.”

Swanson certainly did.