Comments about ‘High school baseball: Jim 'Shoe' Nelson wins Coach of the Year’

Congratulations, Coach! Well deserved recognition!

I must say that I have the deepest respect for a Coach like this who credits those who help him be successful from past Coachs to the community, it takes more than showing up to practice during the season it takes dedication and involvement in the youth and Shoe has shown this time after time. Other programs could take a page out of his book and have successful results but until then the rest of the State will always fall to 2nd place or last. I have watched teams like Pleasant Grove, Provo, Brighton, Wasatch, Timpanogos, Park City, in competitive ball always do well until they hit High School and then you wonder what happened to them, they competed so well against club teams and won tournaments but then if you look at their programs you will see that they don't have a Head High School Coach who actually runs a program, they just use them as feeder teams and then when they get to them they don't seem to know what to do with them because they are already playing better ball than they know how to teach, Coach Shoe is the opposite!

shabby:

Not sure what ball you have been watching but the Spanish Fork youth program is far superior to the one say in Provo. The facilities, emphasis on competition and overall coaching of SF vs. Provo in the lower levels isn't even comparable. I think the coaches of Provo HS baseball for example, have generally elevated the players they receive from the lower levels. Provo Head Coach Lance Moore, for example, has an outstanding overall record, and five of his teams have placed in the Top 4 since 2000 and a number of his players have gone to play at the next level. That's my take.

And one last note, since 2000 I think Timpanogos has won three state titles, as many as SF so I think their high school program is doing just fine. I do believe Kim Nelson (Timpanogos) and Shoe Nelson (SF) are related so not surprised of their success. Both are outstanding coaches and congrats to Coach Show Nelson for his award--well deserved.

What about Coach Satto from Bingham? He did beat Spanish Fork this year and had pretty good record this past season.

Nice article Jessica.

Sato is a good coach and certainly kudos to him, his staff and the great players that made up Bingham's team this season.

I think the article noted that SF and Shoe Nelson won this specific award for mid-sized schools. I guess since Bingham has well over 2000 students and Spanish Fork has less than 900 that Bingham should win a game between the two schools. What is amazing about Spanish Fork is that they were the SMALLEST 4-A school and the SMALLEST 5-A school when they won their state titles.

Good article; however, Coach Shoe has won six state title, not three as the article states (although his teams have one the last three), they also won in '88, '92, '06.

Eagle, Kim and Shoe are not related, although they've both been intertwined with Utah County baseball for along time. Very true about the size of SFHS, winning titles while being one of the smallest schools in their classification. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you've been in their same classification) they drop to 3A next year.

Watchfuleye, Coach Sato is a great coach and a great man. His teams always show up to play. It's great to see both SF and Bingham in the American Baseball Coaches' Association final national rankings.

@shabby, I can agree with you as far as Wasatch is concerned. For many years alot of us have tried to get the HS coaches involved with the youth teams and super league teams to build a program, not just a varsity team. It seems those schools that work from the youth up have competitive programs year after year. At Wasatch, that is how the Wrestling program got built and became one of the best in Utah. Recently the Basketball program has done the same thing. Both of these programs have relied on parents coaching the youth and working together with the HS coaches. Maybe one day the baseball coaches will look at other programs that do this and have had success, and follow suit. They are replacing one assistant coach, and hopefully the boys can get their confidence back and not be too scarred from this last year.

SF coming down to 3A, along with all the St. George schools is not something that will make it any easier taking state in baseball. So they better start building the youth programs, and now!

Having been coached by Shoe and Sato in a few all star teams they both know there stuff when it comes to winning baseball games and how to teach there kids to be ready to play anytime.
All respect to Shoe, but agreed, how does Bingham'S sato not get this instead of Shoe, when Bingham Beat them when they are ranked # 3 in the nation, and they also lost IN THE TOURNEY, so because Bingham went 25-3 and 23-1 in state thats not good enough as 25-3 and 23-2 in state I guess.
As for people comparing school sizes, to the reason for him getting it is beyond me, when you have a great little league like spanish, thats all they do out in SF, nothing else, check there other sports but softball,
Shoe gets every single SF player in the baseball academy stuff from the time there 6 till 18, so they are good players, and with that team he had this year of course it makes it easy.

@binghamalum, I think the article said "midsize" school. I could be wrong, but wouldn't Bingham be a large school?

@Yankees27, I fully agree with you, for years I knew guys who would try and get the high school coaches to help out a little with their super league teams and never got a return call. Then when those kids get to high school, Shoell wonders why no one respects him. All he needs to do is be more involved in the whole program. I believe if you can't run the whole program from bottom to top, then you shouldn't be a head coach, you should just be in charge of the auction and banquet every year. If he were more involved with the youth programs, he would see better results and have a lot less parent conflict because the parents could get to know him better. It takes alot of time and love to build a program, but it does truly take a community to do it, not just one guy, when he figures that out, maybe he will have a "banner in the gym" (I remember that one from a different poster)

Great Coach...Even better person. Nuff said.