Post 783 Baseball
The House Springs American Legion organization decided to start the baseball program in 1996. Cary Kellett, today’s General Manager, was the founder of the program. In 1996 the program started a varsity and a junior varsity team. The manager of the first varsity team was Jerry Brewer. In 1997 Kellett took over the varsity team and was the manager until 2001. The summer of 1998 was the first success that the program had seen. The varsity team finished over .500 and they won against every district team for the first time. In the following years the program struggled to the point that after the summer of 2001 the Varsity team folded and the program remained with only a junior team. The junior team continued in 2002 and 2003 keeping the program alive. In 2003 the program only had 14 players. In 2004 Kellett was approached by Kyle Lang, who wanted to assist in the attempt of the rebuilding of the baseball program. Lang and his long time assistant Joe Kemper came over to the program to help Kellett in the attempt to start a Varsity team. In the summer of 2004 the program fielded a varsity team managed by Lang and a junior varsity team managed by Chuck Copeland. Copeland was the manager of the junior varsity team in 1997, 2002, ‘03 and ‘04. In 2004 the Varsity had a record of 9 wins and 26 losses. The team won House Springs first district game since 2000 and huge strides were made. In 2005, the program took on another team. In that summer the program fielded a Varsity team managed by Lang, introduced the new Junior Varsity coach Mark Zeller, and started a Freshman team managed by Jeff Grossbauer. All three teams showed major improvement in 2005 as the Varsity team finished with a record of 22 wins and 22 losses. The Varsity team also was seeded second in the district tournament. In 2006 the program continued with all three teams and the progress continued to develop. The Varsity team won the first tournament championship for the program in winning the Elgin Classic in Chicago, IL. The Varsity team went on to post a 30 win and 16 loss season and took a third seed into the district tournament. In the district tournament the Varsity knocked off the number one seed team Rock Memorial and eventually fell to them in the district semi-final. The Junior Varsity continued to make huge improvements. The Freshman team took 2nd place in the Washington Memorial Day tournament and lost in the championship game of their district tournament to Festus. The Freshman 2007 team won the first district 13 title for House Springs as well as the first State Championship posting a 26-11 record.
In the last decade this program has been through its positive and negative times. Entering into this next decade of Post 783 baseball the expectations are high. For this program to grow we need the support of our community and we need to make sure we keep the top athletes in our area part of this program. This program has high expectations and we hope everyone assist us in reaching them.
In the last ten years we have had many players come through our organization that has went on to play baseball or another sport in college. The goal of our organization is to assist everyone in acquiring a college education and hopefully using athletics as a way to fund that education. We are proud of all of our past athletes that have acquired their degree and of all that are in the process of doing so. The following is a list of past and present players that have went on to play baseball at the next level:
Tony Ladona Missouri Baptist College
Todd Brown Florissant Valley Community College
Ryan Good Webster University
Mark Mosley Webster University
Eric Green Southeast Missouri State University
Kevin Werntz Meramec Community College
Casey Korn Cornell College
Kyle Wampler Florissant Valley Community College
Luke Parker St. Charles Community College
Gary Ruble Fontbonne University
Garrett Sutton Fontbonne University
Drew Boyer St. Charles Community College
*If you are not on the list and you did play baseball for our organization and at a College or University please contact Jake Grossbauer at 314-440-0461 or email at jjgross@charter.net
