Conifer High School puts Dan Dreger in as new head baseball coach
CONIFER, Colo. — America’s national pastime is one that requires technical prowess and specific skills to succeed. “Baseball is a very situational game,” explains Dan Dreger, the new head baseball coach at Conifer High School. “Players need to know how to properly execute cuts, rundowns, bunts, holding runners, first and third situations and more. An exceptional athlete who is strong, fast and big [may] find success in basketball or football, but those skills don’t transfer to hitting a baseball, throwing a curveball, or catching a team’s ace pitcher. Telling athletes what to do isn’t good enough. You have to tell them, show them, and provide opportunities for them to practice with meaningful feedback.”
To that end, Dreger and his coaching staff have created a training framework in which they simulate various game scenarios that give players the opportunity to try, fail, get feedback to correct their mistakes and try again. Players not only learn technical baseball skills, but also how to apply them to different situations on the field. The combination of physical and mental agility is one that Dreger himself has developed through his own experiences as a baseball player and coach – he played on the D’Evelyn High School team that made the state semifinals in 2000 before switching to ice hockey, working as a professional referee for a while before D’Evelyn called him back to the game of baseball in 2012.
“I fell in love with baseball all over again, and that started a succession of coaching jobs that led me to Conifer,” says Dreger. Following his first coaching experience for a summer club team at D’Evelyn, Dreger followed his (now) wife to California and got a job in technology while working as the top assistant baseball coach for Tamalpais High School in the San Francisco Bay area. The team won a section title and appeared at the section semifinal the following year. Dreger also coached at the college level in a supporting role at San Francisco State University before he and his wife decided to move back to Colorado.
“I was looking for the right opportunity to coach my own team,” he recalls. “Specifically, I was looking for a blend of facilities, good kids, invested administration and opportunity to succeed. I am thrilled to be at Conifer, where I found [everything] I was looking for with my first head baseball coaching position.”
As he reaches the midway point of his first season with the Lobos, Dreger reflects on what he’s learned from both sides of the dugout. “All the technical stuff, I learned as a player. Becoming a coach taught me that you have to find your own way,” he notes. “Not everyone has the temperament to be John Wooden or Nick Saban. And a different temperament is not necessarily a worse temperament. Kids need and respond to authenticity. Along that same path, coaches need to find drills and practices that suit the way they want to play. Early in their careers, coaches [often] reuse the drills they did as players. Good coaches have a specific reason for implementing each drill and an overall philosophy that [informs] the training environment.”
Dreger hopes the Conifer baseball program will help players attain the grades and skills to play at the college level if they wish to do so and that all players will learn to set and achieve goals through hard work and dedication. “I want the baseball program to be something our Conifer students, parents, and administration are proud of,” he concludes.
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