Haddonfield Baseball Searches for New Head Coach

Haddonfield Baseball Searches for New Head Coach

Nick Turnage and Gene DiMedio, Staff Writers

The 2023 baseball season is right around the corner as Haddonfield Memorial High School is looking to hire a new head coach after Bob Bickel resigned in late August, concluding a 30-year coaching career full of success. Haddonfield has had two losing seasons in a row and is looking for a change in culture. A junior team member, Joey Tedeschi said, “Bickel’s resignation will change the culture of the team depending on the new coach. All the players will miss Bickel, but having struggled for the past couple of years there was a change needed. Not the change we were expecting, and not the decision some of us wanted”. If this indicates anything, the baseball team admired Bickel but realized that it was a good time to change since things weren’t panning out the way everybody expected. Connor Whalen, another player, gave his opinion on who he would want as head coach: “I would love coach Gosse as our head coach, but I don’t necessarily know if he’s qualified enough yet and I’m not sure if they’d hire him”. As players on the baseball team, we feel Gosse would be a perfect fit but we don’t know if he meets the requirements as well, still leaving the head coaching position up for grabs. Along with members of the team, we interviewed athletic director Lefteris Banos about the process of hiring a new coach. He said, “We are actively reaching out to worthy people that we think will be a great fit for our school.” He described the process in detail which showed how important this position is to our school. He clearly isn’t taking it lightly and knows how serious this situation is. He respects Bickel and all the success that he had which is why he believes finding the right head coach is so important: “Anytime you have a long-time coach retire, it always poses a challenge to find someone who is worthy of this long-time coach that you have to replace.”