Elgin CC's Angelo savors milestone, conference title
Elgin Community College baseball coach Bill Angelo hit another impressive personal milestone recently.
Earlier this week ECC gave Angelo his 600th career win - all with the Spartans. Angelo, a former ECC player, came into the season with a career mark of 574-363 and now has 603 wins.
ECC's Game 1 win over Prairie State Tuesday was Angelo's 600th. ECC defeated Prairie State in the nightcap and then swept Moraine Valley Wednesday to secure no worse than a share of the program's seventh Illinois Skyway Collegiate Conference conference title under Angelo.
ECC likely will share the conference title with Oakton, which still had a suspended game to complete. ECC defeated Oakton twice during the regular season.
"Six hundred is a milestone that makes you think back," Angelo said. "It gives you reason to flip back and look at all the players and people you have met and become friends with. I think of all the coaches in the area who have played for me. It's a number that means I've been doing this for a long time and it means hopefully I've had an impact on people along the way. I get calls from some of the former players and that's the neat thing. When you do this for as long as we've been doing it, the numbers kind of stack up and you hit these milestones. I'm probably more excited about all the guys who go on to get degrees, have families or start their own coaching careers. That's what this is all about. I enjoy coaching. I enjoy what I'm doing here and I'm thankful that I've been able to do this for as long as I have."
ECC's sweep of Moraine improved its record to 29-9 overall. ECC is ranked No. 15 in the most recent NJCAA Division II poll.
"This team gets along extremely well and is very unselfish in the way it plays," Angelo said. "They really enjoy playing with each other and they are having a good time. We have strong defense and strong pitching and we've had some pretty timely hitting. Our bats are starting to heat up. Guys have stepped up and filled in nicely. Hopefully we will be playing our best baseball in a couple weeks here when the playoffs start and hopefully make another run to the World Series."
Angelo has coached teams that have appeared in five NJCAA Division II World Series and more than 20 players have earned all-American honors under his tutelage.