Throughout John Urick’s professional Minor League baseball career, he always had a feeling he’d coach one day.
“I kind of knew, I think, as a player that I would end up coaching, just because I was always asking questions,” Urick said. “I was always trying to help the younger players that I was around as being a kind of older minor league guy.”
Now a teacher at Merriam Park Elementary, Urick will be SM East’s head baseball coach for the 2026 season.
After playing for Oklahoma State University, Urick was drafted by the New York Yankees minor league organization (MLO) in 2003. After being cut, Urick signed with the Philadelphia Phillies MLO, playing six seasons throughout his Minor League career.
When his professional baseball career ended, Urick found himself coaching professionally for the Chicago Cubs organization.
Urick has worked multiple other coaching jobs after that, most recently coaching for SM West, ending in 2017.
Throughout his baseball career, Urick has picked up an array of coaching tactics and lessons from the coaches who taught him.
“It just kind of came natural that I would ask questions and try to pick up things from all the different coaches I had, whether it be college or pro,” Urick said. “Cause, you know, in the pros, you move up these [minor league] levels, and you have different coaches every year.”
The players on SM East’s baseball team have experienced a changing coaching staff with three separate coaches in the past three years.
Baseball player for SM East and senior, Oscar Diez, has been disheartened by the coaches changing.
“It’s kind of frustrating as a player not being able to have the same coach year after year, but I think in all three years we’ve had good coaches who care about the players, which is the most important thing,” Diez said.
Diez hopes that Urick allows the baseball team to be more player-led than it has been in the past, with team members taking over more leadership roles but still with guidance from Urick.
Baseball player for SM East and senior, Quinlan Dunham is in support of one of the major changes Urick is making to the team; a new style of practices, with every baseball team practicing together. Dunham believes it helps the team members get closer.
“I really like what he’s done so far in regards to scheduling practices for teams and how he’s managed communication,” Dunham said.
As Urick charges in to lead his new team, he is worried about the lack of senior players compared to last season, but he is keeping a positive mindset of this drawback.
Urick is predicting that the players will push themselves harder to match the strengths of last season’s team.
“We’re gonna be an inexperienced team at the varsity level,” Urick said. “This year, we lost 14 seniors from last year that all played a lot. And so we have a lot of unproven players, but I think they’re eager to prove what they can do.”
According to Urick, his team plays a tough schedule this year. But he expects, no matter what, that the players will grow and improve their skills from where they started at the beginning of the season.
“I have no doubt that wherever we start the season, we will be, you know, exponentially better by the end of the season, that's something that I think will be proud of as a staff and as a baseball program,” Urick said.
Great job Alex!