Lyle/Pacelli baseball coach Meyer reflects on team's run to state title game

Jun. 21—LYLE — Brock Meyer is a native of Lyle who graduated from and played sports at Lyle High School. He was part of the first class that co-oped with Pacelli High School for sports, during the 1997-98 school year.

Meyer has been the head baseball coach at Lyle/Pacelli for the past 12 seasons. This year he guided the Athletics to a runner-up finish in the Class A state baseball tournament and the Athletics finished with a 24-2 record.

Following the tournament, Meyer talked about what the season meant to him, the team and community as well as the journey to the state championship game.

Now that you've had time to reflect on the season, what does placing second in the state mean for you and the team?

Obviously it's a big deal for the program and the kids. Reflecting on it, I think a lot of people outside of the team probably didn't expect that kind of run this year. But we believed all year that we could do it. And looking back (at) how good our pitching and defense was towards the end of the year ... it was just kind of a fun run and an unexpected season for a lot of people.

It was a great season, but did you have any regrets or things you would have done differently?

There's not one specific thing, a lineup change or anything major that would have happened. Only having 13 varsity players, you don't really have much to go to after your starting nine. I'm sure there's individual games where I wish I would have done something different, but nothing I can recall off the top of my head.

This was your 12th season as the L/P coach. There were some lean times in the beginning, what were those years like?

I used to have to keep one junior high kid waiting in the wings: "Hey, if someone gets hurt, you may have to come play in the varsity game," because we only had nine (players) the first two years, and maybe 10 one year. But we still won the conference for my first four years, but it was a smaller conference with only five teams. ... But we had high-end, quality players a couple of times in Jordan Hart and Danny Bollenberg, who were fantastic players. Daniel played at St. Thomas and Jordan was an All-American at (Minnesota State, Mankato). Those guys helped the program quite a bit those first five, six years that I was there.

Now you have Jordan Hart, a former All-American, and former minor-league player Zach Schara as your assistant coaches. How much does that help the program?

Quite a bit. Zach's an intense guy, a competitive guy. Every day at practice, he gets on the kids if he sees the kids not hustling or something he expects, because he's been around the game for so long and at the highest levels. He just expects a lot out of them and he gets after them. And we do, too. And I like that intensity because I don't raise my voice a lot. He can do that for me, and he has a great knowledge of pitching. We kind of let the whole year go with the catchers calling the game because we want them to learn the game. But during the playoffs, he called all the pitches in the playoffs, which helped our catcher take his mind off things.

You're a native of Lyle and played sports there. Now coaching the team, does that make this run more special for you?

Of course. I was there from the beginning, 1998 when we had our first Lyle/Pacelli baseball team. I was a junior that year. We had good teams, too, just never made it anywhere near where we did this year. But yeah, it's always going to be a little more special for me and my family. Me and my wife both graduated from Lyle.

You also have a son (Landon) on the team, so that must be special, too. And you also probably have a close relationship with some of the other players because of him?

For sure, just because they play other sports together. And I've known those parents and most of those parents graduated from Lyle as well. It's kind of a close-knit team. And when we lived in Lyle years ago, those kids would be over at our house playing. ... So it's always special to have a kid on the team. I have a seventh-grader who was on the team as well, he was on JV more than anything.

You have some talented players coming back next year. Is there going to be a great drive and expectations to succeed in 2024?

Everybody got a little taste of it and what it feels like. I think the offseason will be big for these guys. Our sophomores and juniors, if they have a good offseason, I don't see a reason why we can't make a run again. If they put the time in and work like they did last year.

And with that success this year, does that give the youth players in the community more incentive?

Yeah, the young kids, they know who all the players are now. Maybe they didn't before. ... I coach a younger team, too, a 13U traveling team that my other son is on. They know all the (high school) players. It was a fun run and it brought a lot of people together. People I haven't seen in years contacted me. It was a great thing for the program and the community.