Coffey, Bulldogs looking to write storybook end to memorable career

Like many senior baseball and softball players around the area, Batavia's Jordan Coffey is just about to see his high school playing days come to an end.

That could come as soon as today when the Bulldogs (27-6) put their winingest season ever on the line in the Class 4A Willowbrook championship game against the host Warriors (25-9 and riding an 11-game win streak), though Batavia certainly has proved it is capable of winning a regional - and then a few more titles.

The difference from those other seniors and Coffey is in what a public way Coffey's career at Batavia has played out.

Almost his entire four years at Batavia have been spent in the spotlight. As a freshman on the baseball team, as a sophomore throwing perhaps the most memorable touchdown pass in school history, a 70-yarder to beat St. Viator on the Bulldogs' road to the Class 6A state championship game, and as a center on the basketball team since his sophomore year.

Coffey is going to graduate with 10 varsity letters, a captain of both the football and baseball teams his senior season, with 7 all-conference awards (4 in baseball and 3 in football) while playing in over 200 varsity athletic contests.

That is an amazing amount of time he has given to Batavia athletics. Not many - any? -days off there.

And Coffey certainly has been a model student-athlete away from the playing fields, earning academic all-conference in each of his varsity seasons. This summer he will make his third mission trip to Africa, working in a school in Nairobi, Kenya.

For all that success, Coffey also has learned to deal with disappointment. Football seasons that didn't go quite as he hoped after getting to Champaign in 2006, and the shoulder surgery that cost him his senior basketball season.

The shoulder problems also turned away all kinds of Division I programs, most for baseball and some for football. Instead, Coffey will play both those sports next year at Taylor University, an NAIA school in Upland, Ind.

And yet Coffey takes an absolutely positive - and remarkably mature - perspective on the past four years.

"It's been a blast," Coffey said. "The disappointments, the failures, the success, that's sports for you. No one is going to succeed 100 percent of the time unless you are Bill Walton at UCLA. It's been fun, it's been a learning process the entire way and I feel like I am still learning stuff about myself or about the game."

Coffey has competed against the highest level in all three sports, and he's done it at the marquee positions of quarterback, center and starting pitcher. Coffey played against eventual state champions in all three sports - Naperville Central in baseball as a freshman; Normal Community in football as a sophomore and Marshall in basketball as a junior.

Coffey holds several Batavia football and baseball records. And it's been really enjoyable to see how his final season as a Bulldog has gone this spring.

Coffey didn't quite heal from his December surgery in time to join the Bulldogs' rotation at the start of the year. And while he was sidelined, Adam Karger, Chris Wood, Kevin Flinn and Henry DuQue have joined Brian Krolikowski to give Batavia a pitching staff as deep as it is talented.

While Coffey has missed pitching - he has returned to the mound later in the season - he has been a huge key to Batavia's success with his big bat in the middle of the order.

"I would never have guessed we would have the pitching we did," Coffey said. "Everyone was talking about our pitching staff and I wasn't even there and I was like, 'Dang, I wish I could be part of that.' I'm sitting back and watching these guys and it's 9-0 (Karger), 7-0 (Wood), we're putting up numbers on the mound.

"It took the pressure off me in terms of coming back seeing we had the pitching we did. It allowed me to focus more on hitting. I feel like I've been able to produce."

Coffey has done just that at the plate, batting an even .500 during the Western Sun season to push his season average to .450. He has a team-high 8 home runs.

"That's just taking what we do in practice every day and executing. The home runs come with good hitting," Coffey said. "It's just trying to stay within ourselves. Nobody is trying to jack the ball anywhere like we have in the past years. My sophomore year we had 70 home runs as a team, this year we aren't even half of that but our average is probably 100 points higher. We're just trying to stay within ourselves, move guys from one station to the next. We're just trying to score runs and do it as a team. It's a team effort this year."

Starting today against Willowbrook and possibly next week at St. Charles North, Coffey and the rest of the Bulldogs have a chance to write a memorable end to his Batavia days. They'll also be looking to erase the frustration from some early postseason exits.

"Obviously we've been disappointed the last couple years in our playoff runs," Coffey said. "It's been nice to have confidence in our pitching and hitting this year to think we can go a long way. But obviously we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and take it one game at a time."

Win or lose today, this won't be the last you read about a Coffey at Batavia. There's Jesse, a sophomore, then Micah finishing seventh grade and Canaan fifth.

But Jordan isn't ready to say goodbye just yet.

"It's been a blast and hopefully it lasts a couple more weeks," Coffey said.

jlemon@dailyherald.com