Where the coach wants players gone

WEST JORDAN — Jamie Keefer coaches baseball at a school where, if things go well, he won't have any players returning next year.

Zero.

He meets many of them for the first time at 5 a.m., when he goes to their houses and — with parental permission — rousts them out of bed to take them to West Ridge Academy. Students arrive with a variety of problems, ranging from drug and alcohol abuse, to reckless sexual behavior, to psychological issues, to just plain being out of control.

If they stay out of trouble, and their grades are good, they can play on the team. If they do really well, they get to leave.

Consequently, Keefer can't say with certainty that any of his players will be back when the 1A baseball season starts in August. The idea is to get them back home as fast as possible. Average stay: 11 months.

That's barely enough time for a short reliever to get warmed up.

It's day-to-day when you're at a place that aspires to "help troubled adolescents make real, lifelong and sometimes life-saving changes."

So what does Keefer do when other schools come tempting him to take a (considerably easier) job?

He tells them to keep moving.

He likes where he is, even though only three of his players last year — an all-time high — had played beyond Little League.

"No coach in Utah would want this job," says Keefer. "But if I can stay here for life, I'll be here."

He's sticking around, even if his players don't.

The Eagles close out their summer league season this week against Hunter, Cyprus and East — all larger schools with bigger talent pools. West Ridge has sponsored athletics for 10 years. The place has become a small-school force in baseball, with 24 players earning All-State honors.

Sure, problems arise, like the time they got to the state championship game (2003), only to forfeit. One day they were favored to win the title, next day they were as gone as shag carpet. Two players had broken school rules by using drugs, which teammates knew about. So school officials decided to take the hard way out.

They sent the team home.

That's the thing about sports at West Ridge: It's actually not about the sports.

"We want our kids to win, but not at the price of their integrity and ours," says school therapist Mike Ruoho.

Keefer, in his third year at the academy and first as head baseball coach, knows where many of the kids come from. A former Granger High student, he became a father at 17, which kept him from playing baseball his senior season. He also had to overcome alcohol addiction.

He later coached the Lehi and Hunter summer baseball programs.

Admittedly, his is not a job for everyone. At West Ridge, they subscribe to Forrest Gump's observation that life is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you'll get.