Back in the Mix: First-year coach Jon Ramsey has University poised for another Division III select title
by William Weathers // GeauxPreps.com Contributor
When coaching friends asked first-year University High baseball coach Jon Ramsey about the prospects of his team for the upcoming season, he remarked the Cubs would be younger than their predecessor that won the school’s first state championship last May.
Ramsey was also aware of the amount of talent he had, one that would lend itself to an early bumpy ride with the potential to reach the same destination as a year ago.
“I thought we were going to be OK as we moved through the year,” Ramsey said. “Early on we took a couple of lumps. We had some games where we should have won and didn’t, but I think we learned about that throughout the year.”
Not only did University graduate some of its top players such as Southern Mississippi signee and Class 3A first-team All-State pitcher Camden Sunstrom, but the Cubs also had to replace outgoing coach Justin Morgan after a 10-year career that was capped by an 11-8 victory over St. Charles Catholic for the Division III select state crown.
Ramsey, a native of New Oxford, PA, had served as an assistant to Morgan the previous five years and was named U-High’s new coach last June. All the 55-year-old Ramsey has done is put together another high-level team that returns to McMurry Park in Sulphur with the intention of defending their state title.
No. 2 University (27-9) opposes No. 4 Catholic-New Iberia (24-11) in the best-of-three series that begins at 11 a.m. Thursday. The series continues at the same time on Friday and if necessary on Saturday.
“The majority of the guys starting for us are juniors are sophomores,” Ramsey said. “The entire pitching staff, for most part’s underclassmen. We were young, but talented, and have grown up a lot this year. We’re playing pretty good ball right now.”
The Cubs have matched their second-longest winning streak of the season, winning seven straight games that include three consecutive sweeps in postseason play over No. 15 St. Thomas Aquinas, No. 7 Calvary Baptist, and No. 3 Pope John Paul.
With a change in format from a single game to a best-of-three series U-High is afforded the opportunity to face Catholic-NI for the second this season. A non-district road game on March 22 featured three lead changes in the latter stages of the game where the Cubs scored twice in the seventh inning for a 5-4 victory.
“They’re a good team that gave us everything we wanted, and we were fortunate to come away with a win,” Ramsey said. “We know each other. It’s going to be a good series.”
Ramsey grew up 10 miles east of Gettysburg College and wound up attending Slippery Rock University where he was a catcher.
Slippery Rock advanced to the Division II World Series and finished third during Ramsey’s freshman season. An ankle injury limited the rest of his career, opening a door for him to be a student coach which kick-started his coaching career at Gettysburg.
“Coaching’s been a part of my life my entire life,” Ramsey said. “Since I got out of high school, I started coaching at camps and always enjoyed it. I always looked at catchers as coaches on the field. They’re seeing everything that’s happening on the field or should see it.”
Ramsey spent four years at Gettysburg before moving to the Division I level where he joined the coaching staff at Penn State. He was a coach there for eight years, a span in which he met his future wife Melissa, a native of Baton Rouge, who was an assistant coach on the women’s soccer team and has since become a successful soccer coach of U-High’s girls program.
They decided to move to Baton Rouge in 2005, which led to Ramsey’s coaching journey taking him to the staff of Baton Rouge Community College for two years as third base coach under head coach L.J. Dupuy. He became the head coach at now defunct Redemptorist for five years and was the pitching coach for three years at St. Amant which reached the Class 5A state tournament in 2013 and 2014.
“Coaching’s part of what I do,” Ramsey said. “It keeps you young. I like coaching high school. I loved coaching college. I don’t know if I would have liked pro ball or anything like that.”
Morgan, who resigned after last season to join Marucci Sports, guided U-High to a pair of state quarterfinal appearances in 2021 and ’23. The Cubs were also the state runner-up in 2019 against St. Charles and in ’22 against Vandebilt Catholic.
U-High appeared headed toward a third runner-up finish last season, trailing three-time defending state champion St. Charles 8-1 going into the fourth inning. The Cubs, though, staged a comeback for the ages that included the seventh-inning magic of shortstop Jake McCann, voted the game’s MVP, who doubled with the bases loaded and wound up going 3 for 4 with 5 RBIs in an 11-8 comeback victory.
“We pretty much had the same mentality,” Ramsey said of Morgan, also a college catcher at UL-Lafayette. “When he brought stuff up, I said that’s what I believed and the same things with what I said. The biggest thing was building the culture to go to the next level. He had already been to the state finals and semifinals before. The culture continues to build.
“He and I are two totally different people, but we have a lot of the same baseball philosophies,” Ramsey said. “I may be a little more aggressive. We were both catchers in college, we saw the whole game, saw the whole picture. What we had built over the last four years, going into the state title last year and into this year, it’s all culminating.”
U-High ushed in Ramsey’s tenure with losses to Dutchtown and Lutcher. The Cubs responded with a pair of wins to close the three-game series with the Bulldogs, the 2024 Division II non-select state champions.
“The first game we lost to Lutcher, we kind of gave that game away,” Ramsey said. “We had a couple of errors; we had a couple of people that hadn’t thrown a lot who were on the mound. Overall, we did well. From that point forward we had this mindset that we could get this done.”
A trip to West Monroe High for the Trey Altick Tournament on Feb. 21-22 proved fruitful with U-High coming away with four wins to spark a seven-game winning streak.
The Cubs opened with a 2-1 win over Class 5A Byrd and Class 1A St. Frederick (14-0) before a pair of noteworthy wins over North DeSoto (10-8), a team that’s in the Division II non-select state final series, and annual nemesis St. Charles (4-1) which reached the Division II select state quarterfinals.
“The rest of the year we stayed with our process, keeping the pressure on the defensive, making plays defensively and pitching,” he said.
U-High went 12-5 against Class 54-4A schools, taking two of three from North Vermilion, a Division II non-select quarterfinalist, and road wins over Riverside Academy (3-0), a Division IV select semifinalist, and E.D. White (9-6), a Division II select finalist.
U-High established a season-high nine-game winning streak that appeared in peril against Catholic High-NI, a game that featured both team’s top-end pitching in Brody Mayeux for the Cubs and Lane Fenske for the Panthers, who also turned to senior standout J.D. Hidalgo in relief.
“Both teams saw each other’s best,” Ramsey said. “We both have a good idea what each other’s about.”
One of the larger school setbacks took place at LSU’s Alex Box Stadium when Division I select reigning champion Catholic High rallied for a hard-fought 11-8 victory to stop the Cubs’ winning streak.
A pair of one-run losses, including an 11-inning opening game, separated U-High from the District 6-3A championship against Parkview Baptist, a Division III state quarterfinalist.
“Parkview did what they had to do to win,” Ramsey said. “We had opportunities to win both games. I told the guys we wanted to win those games, but we fought, competed, and went after it. After that, the focus was getting back to the state tournament and getting a chance to win it.”
McCann, a Belhaven signee and Class 3A first-team All-State selection in ‘24, remains U-High’s leader at shortstop and at the plate where he tops the team in hitting with a .383 average, 43 runs scored, three homers, 24 RBIs, and 14 stolen bases.
“He’s just our guy, our defensive captain,” Ramsey said. “He commands the infield. He’s just a great player.”
Junior second baseman/pitcher Trey Sotile has a .325 average with a pair of doubles and 15 RBIs, and junior center fielder Jaris Hamilton bats .314 with seven doubles, three triples, 24 RBIs, and 29 runs. Northwestern State signee Lane Mixon, a junior third baseman, bats .304 with five doubles, two triples, and 21 RBIs.
McCann, Hamilton (3-of-4), and Mixon all collected RBIs, and first baseman Ethan Hopkins, a Centenary signee, and right fielder Max Mahaffey each had two hits in last week’s 7-3 win in Game 2 to sweep Pope John Paul.
“Defensively, Ethan’s stepped up his game big time,” Ramsey said. “This year he’s outstanding. He has hit No. 4 all year and has potential for big-time power. He’s an RBI guy that just gets the job done for us.”
Ramsey also believes the Cubs have one of the more athletic outfields with Hamilton in center, Mahaffey in right, and Caden Connor in left.
Ramsey said assistant coaches Ricky Waguespack and Ryan Woods have worked extensively with the pitchers where Mayeux, a right-handed junior, and Grant Sunstrom, a junior right-hander who’s committed to Louisiana Tech, are the staff’s leaders. Sunstrom was the team’s winner in Game 1’s 1-0 win over Pope John Paul with 6.1 shutout innings with four hits and six strikeouts followed by Zeringue in relief with a strikeout.
“We have a bulldog mentality,” Ramsey said. “We’re coming after you and that’s played well through this season.”
Sunstrom’s 6-3 with a 1.49 ERA, 59 strikeouts, and 27 walks in a team-high 65.2 innings followed by Mayeux who is 6-2 with a 3.47 ERA with 35 Ks and 20 walks in 48.1 innings.
Zeringue (1-2, 7 saves, 2.62 ERA, 47 Ks, 33 innings) is part of the Cubs’ depth on the mound, a 6-4 left-hander, along with Sotile (2-0, 4 saves, 14 Ks, 10.2 innings) and 6-foot-7 sophomore right-hander Grant Vollmer (7-1, 1 save, 1.34 ERA, 43 Ks, 47 innings).
“We knew it was going to be Brody and Grant as 1-1A,” Ramsey said. “Brody competes for us and has pitched in a lot of big games for us. He’s that guy. He’s pitched in Game 2 and helped us close things out the last couple of series. Grant throws from a funky three-quarter arm slot. His body has yet to fully mature. Once that happens, he’s going to be even better than he is now.
“Vollmar’s a big guy whose body has yet to mature,” Ramsey said. “When he releases the ball it’s so much closer to the plate. As we’ve gotten into games, he’s been outstanding for us. Has been like a No. 3 starter with a bunch of strikeouts and he commands the zone. He’s only going to get better as he gains confidence and his body matures. I can’t say enough about how well our pitchers have done.”
Ramsey heads into his first state championship series cognizant of sage advice he’d received focusing more on his team and their execution rather than the opposition.
He doesn’t plan to deviate from his philosophy at the plate, on the bases, or on the mound that he believes can provide a template for success if executed.
“We’re going to stay with what we’re doing,” he said. “In the game of baseball, you’ve got to get three outs regardless of who the opponent is. They have to get three outs against you regardless of who they’re pitching. Try to take the extra 90 (feet) when we can, and eliminate the extra 90 on defense, throw strikes, and play defense behind our pitching.
“That’s the story of baseball,” Ramsey said. “You pitch, you play defense, and you hit, you’re going to win. We’ve been fortunate. We’ve been playing pretty good ball, playing pretty good defense pitching pretty good, and doing enough offensively to win games.”