With Spring being right around the corner, sport coaches are getting prepared for the season to start. We interviewed the tennis, baseball, track, and golf coaches. We asked them many questions relating to the new season at the new school.

Track and Field coach, Bree Olson is a new head coach this year but has two years of coaching the eagles. She says the team’s goals this year are to bring the team together under a new head coach and to do well at true team. Coach Olson says she’s been attending lots of meetings and clinics for coaching. She has been going to as many things as school will let her. So far they are planning to keep the middle school kids down at the middle school. When I asked if she was excited for the season, she said she was super excited to work with the kids and be on a brand new track.

New Ulm Golf coach, Daniel Janke has high hopes for the 2017 season. His plan is to become conference champions and have an improvement overall for the team. He would like to work on having a balanced varsity team to increase their potential of becoming conference champs. To improve his coaching from year to year, Janke keeps up on clinics, learns new tips and practice ideas, and focuses on each players golf swing to help them individually improve their game. There is no “typical practice” according to Coach Janke, every day differs depending on what particular skill they are going to focus on that day. Coach Janke said he got involved in coaching Golf because he has always had a love for golf and wanted to get involved. This is Janke’s 12th year coaching New Ulm’s Boys Golf team.

Boys Baseball coach, Kevin Briggs said his expectations are high for this season. He has his sights set on winning the conference because New Ulm has not won the conference since 2011. He says he hopes to get to state and do well there. His ultimate goal is just for the team to improve throughout the season. He said he learns by taking notes from season to season and input from assistant coaches. He said last year’s performance has made his expectations much higher, and he hopes that the kids can handle that. New Ulm has had 20 state appearances, and Briggs is responsible for one.

Boys Tennis coach, Peter Engeldinger is super excited to utilize the new tennis courts. The new courts bring in new opportunities for potential home tournaments and just all around more home matches. Coach Engeldinger plans to maximize the use of the new facilities by using the new lights and taking advantage of having 8 courts instead of 5 like at the old facility. He improves his coaching from one year to the next by going to tennis camps and working on different techniques to teach the players. The typical practice for Boys Tennis is a warm up to encourage some team bonding and get warmed up. Focusing on a new skill each week is another thing Coach Engeldinger likes to work on each day at practice. Engeldinger got started in coaching because of the retirement of the previous tennis coach, Mr. Poncin and was super psyched about hopping in to coach Boys Tennis.

All of the coaches for spring sport are excited to start the 2017 season and have high hopes for their teams. Only time will tell how well each team does for the 2017 spring sports season.