MOUND MEETING — First-year Truman/Martin Luther/Granada-Huntley-East Chain head baseball coach Jordan Petschke (center) chats with his Jaguar infielders during recent high school action in Truman. Petschke hopes to continue the program’s strong tradition. (Photo by Greg Abel)

TRUMAN — “When they see you in this Jaguar hat, I want them to know you’re a good kid, because that’s what this program means.”

That’s what Jordan Petschke told the Truman/Martin Luther/Granada-Huntley-East Chain baseball players when he talked about his goals as the Jaguars’ new head baseball coach.

Jordan and assistant coach Christian Petschke, his brother, said they wanted to take over the Jaguar program after long-time friend Scott Chirpich left the head coaching position after the 2019 season because they wanted to pass on lessons they learned early on.

“I like to think I take a little bit from all my coaches, but it starts with our dad (Jeff Petschke),” Jordan Petschke said. “He was our first coach and teacher of this great game. He taught us how to play the right way and that is the way I coach my kids.”

The Fairmont graduates — Jordan in 2010 and Christian in 2013 — added former Fairmont baseball coaches Jerry Brooks and Todd Sukalski, as well as current coach Don Waletich and Adam Schmidt, as mentors whose tactics they learned from and plan to use to teach. Jordan added his college coaches from Iowa Lakes Community College and Augsburg University.

While Jordan said all those coaches, and former youth coaches Rod Heinrich and Randy Beck, helped develop who he and Christian will be as coaches, their dad always taught the core lessons.

“We were raised knowing you’ve got to try your best and you got to hustle out there,” Jordan said. “You can’t walk on the field, don’t dilly dally. Bad stuff will happen, but you got to move on. You’ve got to be mentally tough.”

Jordan Petschke said that mental toughness leads to another one of his core goals for the Jaguar program. He said he wants to teach kids in the Jaguar baseball program to always compete no matter what.

“We will compete with anybody and harder than anybody we play on the baseball field,” Jordan said. “Now, that doesn’t mean we’re always gonna be the best team, and we might make mistakes. We might miss a ground ball or strike out or this and that, but we will never stop competing.”

Jordan said a big part of being able to always compete is having the mental strength to understand baseball is a game of failure. He said he and Christian like to emphasize the difference between physical errors and mental errors, and how they affect the way players act.

“Growing up, my brother and I, we’ve had all kinds of different coaches,” Petschke said. “For us, those physical mistakes, if you strike out, if you miss a grounder, you know, you miss a pop fly? Forget it. I’ve already forgotten it.

” … If you’re doing everything right, everything we told you, I’ll pick you up because you’re not trying to miss that grounder, you’re not trying to strike out. But our mental mistakes aren’t like those mistakes. … baseball is hard, life isn’t fair. You’re gonna make mistakes. Forget it, you can’t dwell on it. Versus a mental mistake like missing a sign or showing up to practice late, missing practice. That’s the stuff where I’m gonna hound you because everybody else is here, why aren’t you here? … Physical mistakes, we’ll work on it. We’ll work on grounders until our hands bleed, we’ll get those extra swings. But when you sit on first base or the box and you deliberately miss a sign or don’t do something that’s asked, then you’re going to get bogged down. That’s my biggest thing.”

Jordan and Christian bring a handful of years of baseball coaching into their debut season with the Jaguars. Jordan coached junior high baseball for Fairmont, while Christian coached junior high baseball while he was in college. They have also both been around a few Jaguar players as assistant coaches for the Granada-Huntley-East Chain/Truman football team.

Jordan said his connection with Chirpich helped persuade him to take the job when it opened.

“Scotty lived right behind us growing up,” Jordan Petschke said. “We’ve been friends with him and his family for a long time. We always kept track of how he was doing, how the program was over here. It’s always been good, but that last year, he talked to me about possibly coming in. He was thinking it would be his last year so he wanted me to get to know the kids a little bit, so if I got the job, I could come right in and run with it.”

As the brothers go through their debut season, Jordan said they want to build on a culture that is already in place with the Jaguar program. He said Chirpich built a good environment in the co-op program, including its first state appearance in 2017, and he and Christian want to keep the upward momentum going.

“We’re excited to be here,” Jordan said. “We hope that every kid that’s eligible to come out for baseball does so we could get our JV back. We’ve got good fans, they’ve been great even though it’s been so cold. … Scotty had great teams over here, he built a great culture. We’re just trying to expand on that.”