Former Marine has Lutheran Saints marching to first Class A baseball state final

Indianapolis Star

7 hours ago

INDIANAPOLIS – It's the hottest part of the day and the afternoon sun is beaming down on the Lutheran baseball field.
The team is taking batting practice, and the pitching machine is cranked up high in preparation for its game against Kouts for the Class A state championship Friday at Victory Field.
Freshman Rodney Freeman is at the plate, struggling to make contact. With every whiff, the baseball flies out of the back of the batting cage, banging against Alter Field's backstop.
"Stop trying to swing hard and just make contact," Lutheran coach Josh Meaney yells from his perch near first base.
After a few foul tips, Freeman starts spraying line drives around the field, the ping of his bat echoing throughout the otherwise quiet field. Freeman takes a couple more solid swings and exits the cage.
"Nice adjustments," Meaney says to Freeman.
Meaney, a heavily tattooed former Marine, is blunt but fatherly. His engaging style has quickly built Lutheran's program into one kids want to play for. In just three seasons at the helm, he's guided the Saints (20-10) to its first state title appearance.
"It's scheduled, but there's definitely time (for fun)," senior pitcher Ryan Redding said of Meaney's coaching style. "You find the fun in camaraderie. You find the fun in each other. You don't find the fun in the mile that you run. You don't find fun in the base-running circuits.
"It's being able to do all the stuff that you don't like with the people that you do like."
Meaney played baseball at Martinsville under Hall of Fame coach Bill Tutterow. He learned the game from Tutterow and current North Central coach Andy McClain, and Meaney's path to coaching was gradual.
Meaney joined the Marine Corps after graduating from Martinsville in 1995. It wasn't until his son, Gage, started playing baseball that he caught the coaching bug. Meaney started coaching tee ball, then in the Brownsburg Little League. He served as an outfield coordinator for BAM (Baseball Academics Midwest) for three seasons before taking over as an assistant coach. Through the travel ball circuit, Meaney started building relationships and developing his coaching style.
"That just built my knowledge being there around guys who study baseball all the time," Meaney said of coaching with BAM. "It allowed me to continue to build my base as a newer coach, but I learned at a much faster rate with the mental training courses that they have.
"I mix a lot of the old-school stuff in with the new-school stuff, and it allows us to play a little bit different. A lot of it is team mentality, control the controllables. ... You can't control what the umpire's gonna call, you can't control what the other team's gonna do. What you are in charge of is yourself. Your team environment, what you bring to the team. So that's a huge culture buy-in for us that we use a lot."
Lutheran has had winning records in all three seasons under Meaney. The Saints went 16-12 in his first season, losing in the sectional championship game to Greenwood Christian. Last season, the Saints went 18-16, advancing to the semistate championship before losing to eventual champion Barr-Reeve.
Each postseason loss taught the Saints a valuable lesson. Before last season's semistate final, the Saints hadn't played a night game all season. They lost three balls in the lights at Ruxer Field and lost 9-2. To prepare for a return trip to semistate, the Saints held baseball practice under the lights on their football field. They also changed their routine during the long layoff between the semistate semifinals and final, opting not to take naps but to stay up and focused.
"It fueled us a lot, to work harder in the offseason and get better. That's all we needed to do," junior Hudson Mills said.
"It was all the little stuff, really," added Redding. "The things we did in the offseason that we saw when we got tired. We ran a mile every week to work on conditioning. ... Stuff we learned from last year that pushed us this year."
Last Saturday, Lutheran jumped out to a 7-1 lead over Northeast Dubois. The Jeeps scored four runs in the seventh inning before Redding entered with the bases loaded, getting the next three outs to seal the victory.
Redding has emerged as Lutheran's top pitcher. The senior is 3-1 with a 2.42 ERA and 64 strikeouts over 46⅓ innings. Mills leads the Saints with five wins. Senior Sam Strader is 3-0 with a 2.36 ERA.
Mills and senior Owen Lecher are Lutheran's top run producers.
Lecher tore a tendon in his finger last season. The injury was misdiagnosed as a wrist injury and Lecher struggled to play through it. He finally had surgery to re-attach the tendon before football season last fall. Lecher helped lead the Saints football team to the Class 2A semistate final with his hand wrapped into a club. Finally pain-free, Lecher leads the Saints with a .494 batting average and nine doubles. He's second on the team with 33 RBIs and five home runs. Mills is batting .464 with a team-leading 38 RBIs and seven home runs.
Seniors Caleb Courtot, Nate Hughes, Masen Phelps, Strader and junior Dax Lockliear are all batting above .300. Twelve different Saints have at least one stolen base.
"We play fast. Hit baseballs, hit baseballs hard, and we get on the bases and run," Meaney said. "We want to speed up the game for the pitchers and the opposing defense. We try to play as fast of a game as we can. Even our pitchers, they get on the mound, they get their sign and they're ready to pitch.
"I want to speed the game up on the opponent. I don't want them to have time to breathe. I want to run them and run them and run them. I want their heads going 900 different ways."
Meaney said he knew this group of players was talented enough to play for a state championship when he took over as head coach three years ago. He credits his assistant coaches with allowing him to delegate certain responsibilities while keeping the program focused on player development. Meaney calls the base-running signs. Russell Parker and Brad Tidd coach the infield. Jacob Cutter is the team's pitching coach and Christian Brown coaches the catchers.
Now that his initial group of players are seniors, he wanted to test them by scheduling as many games against higher-class schools as possible. The Saints lost their first two games by a combined 21 runs to Bishop Chatard and Roncalli. They quickly rebounded with four wins in a row, including two over last season's Class 3A state runner-up Brebeuf Jesuit.
The Saints are battle tested, but Meaney knows it's hard to prepare for the feeling of a state championship game on the grand stage of Victory Field. He said he wants his players to soak in the moment, embrace it, enjoy it. But once the first pitch is thrown, he expects them to lock in and focus on taking home the trophy.
"We just have to stay calm," Lecher said. "Everyone's gonna have jitters, both teams, every single player. I think they're going to wear off and we've just got to have confidence in ourselves and each other and hope for the best."
Follow IndyStar high school baseball Insider Akeem Glaspie on X at @THEAkeemGlaspie and get IndyStar's high school coverage sent directly to your inbox with the High School Sports newsletter.
All games at Victory Field and streamed live via IHSAAtv.org.
FRIDAY
Class A: Kouts (27-6) vs. Lutheran (20-10), 4:30 p.m.
Class 3A: Jasper (28-6) vs. Andrean (30-3), 8 p.m.
SATURDAY
Class 2A: Boone Grove (25-6) vs. Evansville Mater Dei (23-7), 4:30 p.m.