By CHARLIE HUST
Just six years removed from playing baseball for Webster County High School, Zack Traylor will now returned to the baseball diamond as the new head coach. The announcement was made last Tuesday by Athletic Director Matt Bell.
Traylor, a first-year teacher at WCHS was already on the coaching staff as an assistant for Tom Blumette who was hired in July but resigned in December according to Bell.
“Baseball is my passion and I’ve always wanted to coach and teach and be an influence on kids both in the classroom and also on the baseball diamond,” Traylor stated. “I’m very excited and looking forward to being a head coach, although I’ve already seen the challenges and responsibility of everything being the person in charge. I certainly will need some good help and a strong supporting cast when it comes to assistant coaches.”
Traylor, a 2008 WCHS graduate, had already been overseeing voluntary workouts that began in August and also scheduling games while Blumette was an assistant for the Trojan football team.
“We had as many as 14-15 kids working out during the fall so that’s pretty good participation,” Traylor stated.
Traylor was a five-year starter for the Trojans during his high school career and also played football. He attended Murray State University and completed his degree in Education in 2013. While in Murray, he was a volunteer assistant baseball coach at Calloway County last spring.
He will inherit a Trojan squad that finished 13-20 last season and he noted that part of his duties in the fall was scheduling games for this spring.
“We’re going to have an extremely young team this year so I was able to schedule schools that we should be able to compete with. Having that control over the schedule was very important for us this year because of our inexperience,” Traylor concluded.