The ancient, rusted whistle hung around his neck. His maroon Queen Anne Little League cap was bent and adorned with league participation and all-star pins, the kind that, for adults and parents now working in factories and offices, bring into sudden focus broad-bladed grass, chalk-lined dirt and game-day butterflies.
Paul Lepley, with his wide, natural smile, was there then, coaching kids season after season. And the remarkable thing, in an era where nobody stays with a job longer than three years, is that Lepley has been at it for almost three decades becoming a pillar of Queen Anne Little League. He's the Minor League Director, manages the Miller, Hansen & Torphy (MHT) 8- and 9-year-olds team, single-handedly tallies up each year's tryout statistics, a thankless job requiring hours of work that would only be done by a volunteer.
"He just loves baseball, said assistant coach Elizabeth Hanning, who has known Lepley for 15 years. "We almost never talk about anything but baseball."
Hanning was one of a handful of girls in the league 20 years ago. She loved the game as much as Lepley. But when she turned 13, she decided to continue with the game as a coach, starting with the Foss Maritime team in 1994. She's been coaching ever since, most recently as Lepley's assistant. From her vantage point, she sees a coach that does more than most.
"He compiled all the stats from the tryouts using an Excel spreadsheet," Hanning said from the Interbay Playfield where on a cold, damp afternoon the MHT practice was underway. "I mean I would be getting emails at 3 a.m.," she added. "He can juggle it all."
Lepley grew up in Peoria, Ill., with nothing but basketball on the brain. It's all he wanted, and all that the local community cared about. He'd played sandlot ball in the 1950s and remembers listening to Harry Caray broadcast St. Louis Cardinal games. He did throw tennis balls at his front steps imagining he was a pitcher for the Cardinals. But growing up tall and skinny, basketball was his thing.
But he was cut from his ninth-grade basketball team. Unfazed, he insisted that the coach take him on as a statistician, water boy and occasional player. The coach agreed and Lepley did see a little playing time when the team was winning by insurmountable margin. But those moments were seldom and he never scored.
Now it is baseball that is in his blood. He loves the Mariners. He loves talking about the game and learning new techniques in coaching. He's been listening to consultant Mark Linden, a college player who spent time in the Chicago Cubs' farm system before embarking on his own baseball consulting and coaching career.
Linden was hired by QALL to bring more uniformity to the league's coaching style, to not only help teams get better but to add quality to fundamental training that seemed to be lacking. Coaches were told to use specific terminology and teach kids that so much of the game is played with the feet and legs. Lepley is a believer and during a recent practice he praised a player using Linden's terminology, "Oh, I saw you 'gaining ground' out there, it was really nice."
When Queen Anne Little League president Harlan Boyd talks about Lepley, you can actually hear the gratitude in his voice. He agreed with Hanning that Lepley did a great deal of work behind the scenes for the league and called him the "institutional heart of Queen Anne Little League."
"He's the type of individual who makes the whole thing work," Boyd said. "I think he carries the greatest workload in our association year after year. He does a tremendous amount of administration work above and beyond the responsibilities as a coach."
It was clear, from watching Lepley with the kids, from watching his actions behind the scenes, his volunteer work with the league and the community that at the heart of his motives are the interests of the kids.
"Some people think I have given a lot to these kids and I suppose I have. But they and their parents have given a lot to me, too," he said. "Our future depends on these kids. I want them to be productive, happy citizens who will be able to discuss and solve the world's problems. That will take teamwork and cooperation, just like baseball."[[In-content Ad]]At 13, Elizabeth Hanning knew she had to make a decision. She was a girl in a predominately boys game. Though she excelled, some players and coaches were put off by her desire to continue playing Little League, as if they didn't know what to do with her.
"I hated being 'the girl' on the team," said Hanning, who is not 28 and an executive assistant at Amazon.com. "We didn't' have softball at the time so I grew up playing with the boys, playing hardball."
She recalled throwing balls at the walls of Coe Elementary, practicing her aim but definitely getting out some frustration. Thinking of her future, too. That's when it dawned on her to try coaching. During games, she had always paid close attention to what her coaches were saying, and their strategies. She figured it would be a good fit and it was.
Her first job was as assistant coach of 1994's Foss Maritime squad. She brought her own sense of the game to Foss, but helping her dramatically was Ed Artis, the team's head coach and coach Mark Pembrooke. He stood by her and believed in her abilities, and eventually so did the players.
"They told the kids, 'you're going to listen to her'," Hanning recalled with a smile. "They made me feel like a real coach even when I didn't feel like a real coach."
And so she continued coaching, taking a break only while going to college. Now she's back in the game as Queen Anne Little League's veritable ambassador Paul Lepley, head coach of the Miller, Hansen & Torphy (MHT) 8- and 9-year-olds team. She said Lepley had been coaching for 29 years and she hopes to do that too.
"I hope I'm coaching my own kid sometime, 10 years from now," she said.
