After a 14-13 season last year, varsity baseball coach Ryan Sparks resigned after just 3 years of being the head coach. That set the stage for his assistant coach, Kegan Lanter to take over the head coaching job.
“This is my sixth year as a high school coach and my first year as a varsity head coach,” Lanter told us.
Lanter graduated from Thomas Worthington High School in 2014. He was a 3 year varsity baseball player, starting on 2 district title teams where he was a 2x All OCC, 1x All District, 1x All Ohio.
Junior baseball player Braden Pullins said, “I think he has a very good baseball mind . . .think it’s very good because he is caught up with all the nuances of baseball and how things have changed and how the play style has changed. And I think he’s very smart and he knows what he’s doing. He always has a plan and he does his best to execute it.”
Lanter started his coaching career at Olentangy Orange as a JV Coach. He stayed there for two years before joining Sparks’ varsity coaching staff here at Kilbourne.
Lanter said, “I really enjoyed being an assistant coach because our head coach Ryan Sparks did an excellent job building a strong culture.”
Players have noticed that Lanter is trying to continue to build up the culture that was set.
Pullins said, “I think that it’s a lot more detail oriented and the attention to detail is a lot more emphasized . . . he’s holding us to I feel like a higher standard than it’s been in the past, not that we weren’t held to a higher standard, but I feel like it’s more emphasized now.”
Since Lanter took over the head coaching job, his goal has been to not change up the program too much, but to build off the ideas left by his previous head coach.
“I want to build off of everything we’ve already set in place over the last couple of years, such as our program pillars, our attention to detail, and strong team culture that we have, so I don’t feel like we need to rebuild anything. I feel like we can just keep building on our previous successes,” Lanter stated.
The “program pillars” for the baseball program are: Communication, Attention to Detail, and Lifestyle of Excellence. The goals of the program directly correlate with those pillars.
“My goal is to continue to create and foster a culture that is not dictated on wins or losses. However, it’s dictated on doing the right thing, giving the most and providing ourselves the best opportunity to win baseball games,” Lanter added.
Of course winning baseball games is a goal for the team, but the main purpose for Lanter is to create good men, who will eventually turn into good workers, husbands, and fathers.
