Piekarz gets chance to give back to his Streamwood roots

The Streamwood baseball team is getting a helping hand from a former professional pitcher this season.

And he's not just any former pro. He's one of Streamwood's very own.

Joe Piekarz, a left-handed pitcher who graduated from the school in 2000, has returned this spring as the varsity assistant pitching coach for first-year coach Steve Diversey.

Piekarz knows his stuff.

After pitching three varsity seasons for the Sabres, he spent two seasons at North Central College before moving on to Northern Illinois University, where he was a standout letter-winner in 2003 and 2004.

His baseball experience didn't end at the college level. Piekarz signed with the Oakland Athletics as a non-drafted free agent in 2004 and was assigned to the Class A Vancouver Canadians.

In 2006, he moved up the Oakland chain to the Kane County Cougars, where he went 8-7 with a 3.26 ERA and was named the franchise's co-pitcher of the year.

But arm troubles led to his release early in 2007, and after a brief stint with the Schaumburg Flyers -- "Independent baseball just wasn't for me," Piekarz said -- he hung up his cleats and headed back to NIU, where he is currently finishing his degree in history. He plans to become a teacher.

Streamwood athletic director Steve Gertz coached Piekarz in high school and has stayed in touch with the former star pitcher since he graduated. In fact, Gertz saw Piekarz pitch at NIU, in spring training in Arizona and at Kane County.

Knowing Piekarz's playing days were over, Gertz and Diversey approached the former Streamwood star last September with the idea of returning to the school as its pitching coach.

"I knew our coaches had nice backgrounds in hitting and catching, but what the program lacked was someone with pitching experience," Gertz said. "I knew the kids would be excited to have a specialty coach like that because it's something we've never really had here at Streamwood."

Not only does Piekarz bring a wealth of pitching knowledge to the table, he already has experience coaching high school sports.

Also a former basketball player at Streamwood, Piekarz has been the head boys basketball coach at Indian Creek High School in Shabbona for the past two seasons. For two years prior to that, he was the Indian Creek sophomore coach under, a job he was steered to by then-varsity coach Steve Joslyn, one of Piekarz' baseball coaches at NIU.

His basketball team at Indian Creek went 19-11 this season to improve Piekarz' two-year coaching record to 30-27.

He's hoping for similar success in his favorite sport at his alma mater, where his father, Larry, is still actively involved as a volunteer and little sister, Emily, is a member of the pom-pon squad.

"Streamwood hasn't always had the best baseball program, but I think with the kids they have, hopefully, the program is starting to come around and we can have consistently winning seasons," Piekarz said. "I think that would be a great thing for the school."

The Sabres' new pitching coach has been giving Streamwood hurlers personal instruction since practices began indoors. He teaches them the mechanics of pitching, of course, but Piekarz is also teaching promising young pitchers like junior Zach Klein and sophomore Mike Diebold the mental aspects of pitching.

Piekarz oversees the Sabres' bullpen sessions and mound sessions. He sets the number of pitches that should be thrown in each outing, practice or game. For now, he's even calling each Streamwood pitch during games until the battery gets up to speed as to what pitch should be thrown in what count.

"Joe will tell you he wasn't the strongest kid on the mound when he was throwing, but he was smart," Diversey said. "He knows the right pitches to call in the right situations, which helps out the younger pitchers. They think, 'It's 2-1. Why am I throwing this pitch?'

"The guys like working for him, too, because he's young and they like working with a young guy. It's just good to have a kid from Streamwood back and saying, 'Hey, you can make it.' That can't be underestimated. There aren't too many guys from our school who make it to the next level and play for a couple of years and then come back to our school and give back."

The experience from Piekarz' perspective has been rewarding so far, not to mention eye-opening.

"This has been my first experience coaching any type of baseball," he said. "I definitely think it's a much different challenge coaching baseball than basketball. There are so many more aspects of the game.

"I definitely like working with pitchers a lot. I don't know if maybe I'd like to be a head coach somewhere down the line or if pitching coach is my thing, but I've definitely enjoyed my time so far coaching at Streamwood, helping out with the pitchers.

"I think that's what's made it so special is that it's back where I went to high school and I get to see how the program has progressed since I've been there. Now I get to try to help out and try to bring the success that we're trying to have."

Welcome back, Joe. You're precisely the kind of helping hand your alma mater needed.