MELISSA YERKOV / WIRE PHOTO
Holy Ghost Prep graduate Kevin Wilson helps St. Joseph University first baseman Mike Muha train at CK Performance in Bensalem last week.
By Mike Gibson
For the Wire
For many fans of high school baseball in the Philadelphia area, the name Kevin Wilson will ring a bell.
Wilson was so good while competing at Holy Ghost Prep that The Philadelphia Inquirer named him the Player of the Year in 1997.
You might wonder what happened to him and, in a manner of speaking, he does too.
“I got worse,” Wilson said during a recent interview, laughing.
Worse and better at the same time.
While he had a decent career at the University of Cincinnati, he’s evolved out of the professional playing business and into the professional coaching business. That’s where he’s found a pretty good niche as one of the more respected coaches in the country.
He works a few days a week as the director of the Kevin Wilson Baseball Academy in Bensalem and has taken on an enormous responsibility this summer as an assistant coach with the USA Under-18 National team, which begins the process of whittling down talent on June 19 in Cary, N.C.
While the Team USA major leaguers have struggled at the highest level of international competition recently, the people who run baseball at the lower levels can’t be faulted.
Wilson has served USA baseball in an advisory capacity for the last three years, helping pick the U18 team. USA is the defending two-time World Champion at that level.
“The director of the under 18 national program in USA Baseball, Brant Ust, is a friend of mine and he approached me about this opportunity and I’m just incredibly honored,” Wilson explained. “This is, by far, the best job that I have ever had. To have that chance to put on a uniform with USA across your chest is something that is just indescribable.”
First, though, Wilson will have a short window to observe and roll up his sleeves to get down to the difficult business of cutting some really good players.
“These are 144 kids and they are the top of the top, the best players in America at that age,” said Wilson, a Yardley resident. “In the first week, you go from 144 in five days to 40 and then you take those guys to trials in the last week and then you have more workouts and you go from 40 to 20 and that’s your national team. So that’s three weeks where you go from 144 to 20.
“It’s grueling, but it’s a lot of fun,” he continued. “There are a lot of late-night meetings. Coaches are going back and forth over guys. These are tough decisions. We leave a lot of good players off but that’s all a part of the process, too. (Los Angeles Angels’ star) Mike Trout never made it. Joe Maurer (of the Twins) had to play first base because there was a better catcher. It’s a lot of decisions that are tough ones.”
Still, there’s one overriding goal.
“We’re selecting a team with the thought in mind of being able to beat, say, Cuba,” Wilson said. “That’s tough for a 17-year-old kid. You have to consider his mental makeup as well as his physical one. So that all goes into picking the player.”
Wilson’s commitment to USA baseball will take up a lot of his summer and be over when he takes those all-stars to Taiwan for the World Championship the first week of September. It’s concentrated into four weeks, those three at the National Baseball Academy in North Carolina and one more playing the international games in Taiwan.
Right now, he’s fitting that commitment around his schedule providing individual coaching to high school and college players at his academy, located in the CK Performance building in Bensalem.
One of those players is University of Maryland’s Greg Olenski, who stopped by the facility last week.
“He’s the type of guy I go to if I’m struggling with my mechanics and I don’t feel right and he always has the time to talk to me,” said Olenski, who is also a graduate of Holy Ghost Prep. “I can think of no other person who would do a better job than him. He has all the knowledge of hitting and he’s going to give you that knowledge in a way you can understand and apply right away.”
When Wilson got to college, he said that served as a wake-up call for him.
“I went to the University of Cincinnati and played four years there, but I wasn’t the best player there,” he said. “I got killed my freshman year. I went from the BAL (Bicentennial Athletic League) and — this is nothing against the BAL — to Conference USA where eight of the 10 teams were ranked in the national top 25.
“I thought I was ‘the man’ coming out of high school. I was the Player of the Year in Philadelphia, but that’s just a piece of paper saying congratulations. It doesn’t mean anything once you get to that higher level,” he added. “That’s what I try to tell the kids now and because I understand failure, I tend to be a better coach. I got the sit on the bench next to great coaches and observe. That’s part of what I’ll be doing for Team USA.”
All that because he got worse before he got better.
