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Baker tabbed to be South's new softball coach By DON HUNT Greg Baker has come full circle. The former Medford High football standout has been named offensive line coach and head softball coach at South Medford High, 16 years after earning all-state honors as a defensive tackle for the Black Tornado. "This is a beautiful area and it's great to be back," Baker says. "My parents and grandmother live here and so there was some incentive to come home." Baker, 34, takes over a struggling softball program that won only one game in the Southern Oregon Conference last season. Despite coaching softball for only four years - three years as an assistant coach at Pomona-Pitzer College in California and the last year as that school's head coach - Baker believes he can resurrect the Panther program. "I'm well aware of Southern Oregon Conference softball and the commitment it takes to get the job done," he says. "And I'm not afraid of hard work and long hours." In addition to his coaching duties, Baker will teach technical arts (shop) at South Medford High. Baker admits he didn't know a lot about softball before becoming an assistant coach at Ponoma-Pitzer, but says he learned the fundamentals and the intricacies of the sport on the fly. "It's certainly a much bigger challenge for me than football, which I worked hard at and mastered to a certain degree," Baker says. "But I've been able to transfer my style and philosophy from one sport to the other. The strategies and the ideals were real transferable for me." Baker inherits the softball job at an opportune time. Perhaps the best incoming freshman class of softball athletes are set to enroll at South Medford in the fall, and they'll join junior-to-be Darci Byrne, who is considered one of the top pitchers in the SOC. The young players, competing at the U16 level, recently finished third at a regional tournament in Montana and are headed for a national tournament in Texas in August. Baker was one of the best players on Medford High's 1984 football team that went 10-3 and advanced to the state championship game, where it lost 13-6 to Crook County. Baker went to Walla Walla (Wash.) Junior College for two years, where he earned All-America honors, and then transferred to Colorado State, where he was a two-year starter and honorable mention all-conference performer in the Western Athletic Conference. Baker spent the next two years as a graduate assistant coach under Earl Bruce. After that, he left coaching for eight years. An outdoorsman since his youth, Baker started a hunting club in Colorado. He took corporate managers on retreats where they fished, practiced archery and hunted for upland game. Sports had always been close to Baker's heart, however, and in the mid-1990s he took teaching and coaching jobs at tiny Weldon Valley High in Weldona, Colo. The school had only 25 students and played six-man football. Baker got back into college coaching at Puget Sound in 1997 and then went to Ponoma-Pitzer, a Division III school in Southern California, the following year. Baker looks forward to assisting South Medford head football coach Bill Singler this fall. "I see myself as an extension of Bill's vision with that program," Baker says. "And with my experience in football I think I can make a significant contribution." Reach reporter Don Hunt at 776-4469, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.