Tom Riensche

Varsity Assistant Coach

2005 – 2019

Coach Riensche was a fixture of Lutheran Baseball from 2005 through 2019. I am certain that I do not know anywhere near the total stories players, parents and others have about Coach Riensche. I will do my best to share information and stories about Tom and then rely on others to add to his story.

When I became the head coach at Lutheran for the 2005 season, one of the first considerations I needed to figure out was who was going to assist me in coaching the Varsity and JV teams. Due to the size of Lutheran High School, it can be challenging to find coaches on the school staff so many, if not most, of the LHS coaches are “lay coaches,” meaning from outside the school and non-teachers. My wife, Matthew and I are members of Emmaus Lutheran Church. At that time, two other members were Charlotte and Bob Riensche, Tom’s parents. Two great people. One Sunday they mentioned to me that Tom was available to coach. I knew Coach Riensche as he was the baseball coach at Warren Central and we had played his teams a couple of years when I was coach at Manual. I was not aware he was no longer coaching at Warren Central. The details about how Tom joined me at Lutheran I have forgotten, but it was meant to be.

Coach Riensche attended Concordia Lutheran High School in Ft. Wayne. He was a good player and his team did well in the State Tournament his senior year. Tom then went to Ball State for his college education. I am pretty sure he played baseball there also. He received his degree in Education and started teaching in Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS). I am not certain about all of his schools but I know he was at Crispus Attucks and Broad Ripple before going to Warren Central. Tom has a lot of stories about his IPS days, many characters involved, and situations you can’t make up!

His experience was highlighted by being the Assistant Basketball Coach at Broad Ripple with Bill Smith. Coach Smith was a Hall-of-Famer and quite an animated person. Tom helped Coach Smith and they won the Indiana State Basketball Championship in 1980. Their run to the Championship was made possible by a full court shot made by Stacey Toran with 1 second remaining against Marion in the semi-final game. Coach Riensche also served as the JV Basketball Coach at Lutheran for several years and still does some work keeping statistics for LHS basketball.

In his years with Lutheran Baseball, Coach Riensche’s contributions are too many to itemize. I will highlight several activities and topics that involve Tom and his role with the players, practices and games.

In our indoor practices we had limited space and a lot of players in the gym. Sometimes it could be a dangerous place with baseballs flying around. I learned early on that we could not throw across the width of the basketball court as baseballs were banging off the bleachers on a regular basis. We typically had 3 situations going on simultaneously. I would have pitchers on one side of the gym, another coach would have the batting cage and Coach Riensche would have ground balls to the other players. I know the players had a lot of fun along with working on fielding with Coach Riensche. I believe one of the activities he had going was “Golden Glove” where the players could stay in as long as they successfully made the

play and make an accurate throw back to the catcher.

One of Coach Riensche’s monikers was “Fungo Master!” I do not know how he got this nickname, but Tom would hit fungoes inside, on the football/soccer field and the baseball diamond. He was very accurate with his fungo bat and helped our fielders improve their fielding skills.

An expression attributed to Coach Riensche was “It’s still early!” In the 2010 season, our team started off slowly. We lost our first four games and gradually got our way to a record of 8 wins and 7 losses. Our team had several seniors and we just could not get things going consistently. As we would meet with the players/team after games and at practices, we started saying:” Well, it’s still early.” Our team had aspirations of doing something special and it was not happening. With Coach Riensche and “It’s still early!”, I believe we kept a positive approach to the season and the players did not get down on things. We played Decatur Central on May 7, 2010 in the County Tournament and lost pretty badly and evened our record at 8 – 8. Interestingly, that was the beginning of something special. Our team would then go on to win 11 games in a row! We defeated Indiana Deaf, Beech Grove (2), Covenant Christian (2), University,

Chatard on their Senior Night, Edinburgh, Indiana Deaf and Bethesda Christian to win the Sectional and Edinburgh in Game 1 of the Regional. We were defeated in the Regional Championship game by North Central (Farmersburg) as our pitching plan for the Regional got disrupted. A story for another day. But, this was all possible because the team kept a positive attitude buoyed by the idea of “It’s still early!”

“Bird!” This was a very common greeting to Coach Riensche from the players. I believe it developed from Tom’s affinity for Larry Bird and the players responded to his enjoyment about talking of Bird’s basketball exploits. I am guessing that if some players saw Coach Riensche today, their first word would be Bird!

Coach Riensche liked his Lexus very much. He would arrive at LHS or schools where we were playing and would park where there was no possible way that a foul ball would do any damage. He would have to walk quite a distance, but his car was going to be safe!

Tom served as our first base coach for all of those years. I am sure our players were well served by his actions there. As a coach, Coach Riensche was ejected from only one game in my memory. We were playing in the 2007 Sectional at Marian College against University High School. For whatever reason, the umpires were doing their best to help out University. I document the experience in the article “Umpires With An Agenda” in the Memorable Games section. Anyway, there was a play at second base where a phantom tag was applied to our runner and Tom was not very happy. Hard to believe, but he got thrown out of the game. To show how petty these umpires were, they saw him standing behind the outfield fence for our next game against Lapel and made him leave. He watched from the bus.

On the other hand, I am not quite certain how many times he had to step in for me after I was thrown out of a game. More than I would like to think! I went for a long streak of seasons of staying in games, but I am sure Tom was ready every game! Coach Riensche was extremely loyal and devoted to Lutheran Baseball. As coaches, we were getting paid less than middle school coaches from public schools so there was not much of a financial gain. I could always count on Tom to be there and be the best he could be. It is true that some things are meant to be. Coach Riensche being at Lutheran after all of his experiences was meant to be. I will always be grateful and thankful for him being with me on the diamond for those many years!