Crush baseball and Apollo track and field start the season under new leadership

The athletes of two St. Cloud high school sports teams are entering the spring season with new head coaches, both graduates of St. Cloud Area School District 742.

Tech High School and St. Cloud State alumnus Chris Koenig was promoted to manage the St. Cloud Crush baseball team and Apollo graduate Dustin Cassens is coaching the boys track team at his alma mater.

Though it will be Koenig’s first year at the helm of the Crush, which is composed of students from both Tech and Apollo high schools, the coaching staff has experience. In fact, former manager, now-assistant coach, Steve Taylor was Koenig’s skipper before he graduated from Tech High School in 2005 and another assistant coach, Adam Savolainen, was head coach at Apollo before the teams merged last season.

“It's all come full circle,” Koenig said. “It's kind of crazy but I don't think I could have it any better, to be honest with you.”

Koenig himself has coached baseball at the high school level for nine years, assisting at Apollo. He is a data analyst at TransUnion during the day and said it is helpful to have assistant coaches who work at both schools like Taylor and Savolainen. He also pitched at St. Cloud State and was a graduate assistant for a few years there after he graduated in 2010.

“I'm a firm believer in that if we play the game the right way and we teach the core values of the game of baseball, the winning and losing is going to take care of itself,” Koenig said of the Crush. “More importantly, we need to give these kids a good experience.”

Last year St. Cloud finished second-to-last in the Central Lakes Conference with an overall record of 7-16. Seeded last for the conference tournament, the Crush won the play-in game against Buffalo, which Koenig called a “step in the right direction.”

The team returns its top two starting pitchers this year including Truman Toejnes and senior Elian Mezquita, a right-hander who was voted all-conference last season and will play all over the field in 2023. His fastball sits in the mid to upper 80s, Koenig said, and a strong bat will keep him hitting in the middle of the order.

Often, Mezquita will have to play shortstop along with Joe Hess, because last year’s all-conference starter, junior Jaxon Kenning, was injured during wrestling season.

Central Minnesota still has several inches of snow on the ground and Koenig said practice has been difficult beyond hitting in the batting cage. He is expecting several postponed games and a packed schedule later in the year, so he plans to platoon senior catchers Tim Goman and Blake O’Hara to keep them fresh and have both bats in the lineup. Koenig is also hoping sophomore pitchers step up to eat relief innings.

“There is no slouch (in the CLC),” Koenig said. “You have to bring you’re A game every day and depth really shows, especially this year.”

The first Crush baseball game scheduled for April 11 at Alexandria Area High School has been postponed without a set date and their first game will be April 18 at the Municipal Athletic Complex.

Cassens is has worked on the student support team eight years at Apollo High School has been an assistant coach on the football team for the past six. He assisted coaching track for six years before assuming the head job this season.

Cassens is a 2014 Apollo graduate, where he played football and threw on the track and field team.

While playing football, Cassens said he looked up to coach Justin Skaalerud, who is now the principal at the Apollo. Cassens credits Skaalerud with his desire to coach and work in education.

There are about 70 athletes out for the boys and girls track and field teams this year, up 35 from last year. Cassens said about two-thirds of the athletes are competing on the track and field team for the first time, a number he is happy about considering his main goal as coach is to boost participation. Before the 2020 season, the team would regularly have more than 100 athletes.

Cassens said even now he pitches joining the team to students at Apollo, emphasizing the different types of events someone new to sports or a dual athlete can try.

He said in the past few years he has made a concerted effort to learn more about the techniques and work involved with different track or field events and appeal to different students’ strengths.

“I’ve got to learn a lot more about the whole world of track and field and fortunately the girls head coach, her name is Jill Lipp, she’s a very seasoned coach,” he said. “She's been in our program for about four or five years, and she's been around track for about 30 years so she's a great person to lean on when it comes to those things that I don't know a whole lot about.”

Like the Crush, Cassens' team hasn’t been able to work out much outside. Now in the fourth week of practice, Cassens said only the distance runners have been able to run outside and there is only so much athletes in other events can accomplish indoors.

The Eagles have competed in one meet, placing eighth ahead of Sartell on April 1 in the nine-team CLC indoor championship at St. John’s Donald McNeely Spectrum.

Cassens said to manage expectations and emotions for that first meet he and his staff emphasized getting better and growing.

“Whether it's a few feet, few inches, few seconds or few milliseconds, we just want to see that small improvement until they become the best athlete they can by the end of the track season,” he said.

Apollo had one finish on the boys podium, with the 4x200-meter relay team posting a time of 1:41.47 and placing third. The team is composed of senior Yoseb Brewer, juniors Nicholas Johnson and Harvey Lahti and freshman Ethan Kunstleban.

Apollo’s next meet is the Ed Babcock Invitational on April 18 at Rocori High School.

This article originally appeared on St. Cloud Times: Apollo track and Crush baseball have new coaches