The stakes could not have been higher for this Houston Memorial baseball game.

Arch-rival Houston Stratford across the diamond. District Championship on the line. In the University of Houston’s baseball stadium. Everything a young man dreams about — and every ingredient that makes his stomach do somersaults before the first pitch. 

Pitcher Grant Sperandio could feel his team’s tightness during pregame batting practice. Sure, the Mustangs had won a district championship the year prior. But for the past couple of years, they’d always fallen short of their state championship expectations. The most frustrating part was that there wasn’t anything they could point to as an excuse — no lack of talent or gruesome injury or even a lineup change that turned out to be a bad decision.

This will sound very woo-woo, but Houston Memorial had been searching for an invisible quality; some sort of attitude or edge. And Sperandio knew his teammates were so tense because they all knew they hadn’t found it yet. 

As the players milled around the dugout, their silence speaking volumes, they all noticed one of the coaches sprinting around the outfield shagging balls. There was Brooks Haack, the head football coach turned interim baseball coach, catching pop flies and fielding grounders with a big smile plastered on his face. He couldn’t care less that his shoddy technique looked like someone who’d stopped playing baseball in ninth grade. The scene was so unusual that it took all the kids out of the biggest moment of their lives, and brought them back to why they’d fallen in love with baseball in the first place. 

“It’s a kid’s game, and we get to play it,” Sperandio said. “We’re one of four teams that are still going. He (Haack) reminds us to have fun and enjoy it while it lasts. Even if we do win it all, we only have two more weeks, so play every day like it’s going to be our last.”

The Mustangs won that district championship game and 20 other games in a row en route to the first state semifinal appearance in program history. It’s a remarkable accomplishment made almost absurd once you realize that Haack only started with the team a week before spring break and has never coached baseball in his life. He hasn’t even played baseball since he was a ninth grader at nearby Katy High School. 

Haack had every excuse to delegate this role when Spring Branch ISD’s athletic administration asked him to step in midway through the season. His football team was in the heart of the offseason program; Haack had led the Mustangs to their first district championship since 2011. But there were so many three-year starters on that team, and they had to replace them if they wanted to repeat that success. Coaching baseball could distract him.

But declining the call never crossed Haack’s mind. He may have been hired as a football coach, but his job description called for him to step up far beyond the white lines. He thought back to winning a state championship at Richmond Randle High School with his mentor, head coach Brian Randle, and how Randle had spent a whole year before that season coaching the freshman basketball B team to fill a need within the school.

“It’s one of those things where you ask yourself, ‘Man, what are we doing this for?’” Haack said. “Ultimately, it’s for the kids.”

On his first day on the job, Haack held a closed-door meeting with a team to earn their trust. Little did he know that much of his work convincing this team they could still accomplish everything they wanted had already been done on his behalf. The Houston Memorial baseball team has a ton of dual-sport athletes, like Sperandio, a University of Texas pitcher commit who earned First Team All-District honors as the Mustangs’ quarterback. In their minds, Haack had already proven himself when he led them to the first district championship in 15 years. 

“Whenever we found out he was going to be taking over, I told all the guys who didn’t play football, ‘Y’all are gonna experience what a really good coach is and how much fun it’s gonna be,’” Sperandio said.

And while Haack is mostly upbeat, he can light a fire under your ass with the best of them. Most would think that skill comes from his father, Kalum, a legendary softball coach at Katy High School for 26 seasons. But in those moments, Haack embodies his mother, Leslie. Kalum coached Haack’s youth baseball team, the ‘Haack Attack.’ But whenever he was on the road with the high schoolers, Leslie subbed in. 

“She got on us harder than any other coaches,” Haack said. “My buddies would always be like, ‘Hey, is your mom coaching today or is it your dad?’ And if it was my mom, they’d say, ‘If we don’t run rule this team, we’re going to have to run and condition after the game.’”

Haack set the tone early this season when Houston Memorial had a sloppy pregame fielding practice. For the entire next week of practice, Haack had his team work on the pregame fielding routine every day until they didn’t just get it right, but they couldn’t get it wrong. An outsider might think it’s a small detail. But baseball players know you can give up a couple of runs before the game even starts if you’re sailing throws while the opponent watches. 

“If you’re on the other side of the field and you see a sloppy pregame in-and-out, you’re like, ‘Ok, we’re going to jump on them,’” Sperandio said. “It gives the other team a little momentum.” 

But this is not a story about one coach revolutionizing a program. It’s about a program rallying around its new coach. Haack cannot be more complimentary of the assistant coaches. He knows they probably weren’t jumping for joy when the football coach came over as an interim baseball coach, but each of them has taken on added responsibilities to help Haack’s learning curve. Christo Amarantos is the batting coach, Jared Rothenberg calls pitches, and Blake Lazarine coaches fielding. 

Haack likes to refer to himself as a CEO type, but he admits the kids simply call him ‘Dugout Manager.’ Sometimes, that means turning on his football persona to keep the kids in line. Once, in a media interview, Sperandio said he thought Haack was quieter on the baseball diamond than on the football field. 

“We can go out to the football field right next door, and you can start doing up-downs,” Haack joked. “Then you can hear how loud I really am.”

But for a team with 14 seniors and this much leadership, being the Dugout Manager mostly means reminding them to enjoy these fleeting moments of high school sports. As a 2012 graduate of Katy High School who went 27-3 as the team’s starting quarterback, he’s young enough that he remembers exactly what they’re thinking – and the moments they could be overlooking.

“It’s a lot more fun out there with Coach Haack,” Sperandio said. “He’s a fun guy, and he’s young. He has experience going this far in football, so he knows what it takes. He knows that it’s a sport at the end of the day. You have to have fun. So being able to have a lot of fun benefits our team and how we perform.” 

That mindset has unlocked Houston Memorial’s star players. Sperandio is an ace pitcher. Isaac Richardson, a District Defensive MVP linebacker committed to the University of Houston for football, is the team’s power hitter and lockdown third baseman. Four-year starting outfielder Jake Ernest (Air Force) and utility player Tanner Drda (Sam Houston) will both play college baseball. With all that firepower, Haack can’t take credit for the best season in program history. All he had to do was goofily shag some baseballs during pregame batting practice.

“There’s very, very little that Coach Haack has done,” Haack said. “It’s all about these kids.”