After eight years as an assistant coach with the Valencia Vikings baseball program, Tim Pennell has his shot to lead the Vikings back to the pinnacle of the Santa Clarita Valley baseball scene.
A 12-year veteran of the coaching fraternity, Pennell is getting ready for his fifth year back with Valencia in his second stint with the program, taking over for now-Hart High head coach Brad Meza.
“I’m extremely excited and extremely thrilled to get the job at Valencia High School,” Pennell said in a phone interview. “I’ve been there for quite a while, and, you know, I’ve been through its ups and downs, and to be able to take the reins of that and run the program … I’ve never been more excited and more thrilled to be able to take the reins and run this thing and get it back to where I feel like Valencia baseball should be.”
Pennell, who played college ball at Antelope Valley College before moving to Fresno State, will have some experienced players to lean on in his debut campaign. He named players such as Noah Jaquez and Lincoln Hunt who can lead the team as seniors, while Justin Gaisford got a bevy of experience last year as a sophomore.
Jaquez is likely to split time in the outfield and at pitcher, where he appeared seven times last year, putting up a 2.59 ERA with 20 strikeouts and just 14 hits allowed over 24 1/3 innings pitched. He was also third on the team with 23 hits and second with three doubles and two triples.
Hunt manned second base last season for the Vikings, recording 21 hits, 14 runs and three doubles. Pennell is hoping for both him and Gaisford, who had a 2.59 ERA in 32 2/3 innings last year, to have big years.
Those three, along with some younger players coming up from junior varsity, have Pennell hoping for a Foothill League title fight, though he knows that isn’t an easy task. Hart won the league title last season, while West Ranch and Saugus both finished ahead of the fourth-place Vikings.
“There’s nothing easy about the Foothill League,” Pennell said. “I mean, I’ve been a part of this for 12 years and I know how fierce the competition here is with Hart and West Ranch and Saugus, Castaic coming into the league. I know what that entails, and that’s just going to take a lot of hard work for the boys to get to, but those guys are up for the challenge for that.”
Part of meeting that challenge, Pennell said, is showing how passionate the team is, something Pennell said he noticed when he first got his coaching career started at Valencia 12 years ago.
“We’re really pushing to bring that old Valencia back of, you know, just playing hard and being the old Valencia of, you know, being loud and cheerful and just getting after guys and being aggressive and playing to win every day,” Pennell said.
And while it’s still early in his tenure, Pennell said what he saw over the eight or nine games of summer ball was “a lot of positive things.”
“A lot of guys have been putting time in and playing with summer teams and just getting better day by day,” Pennell said. “So we’re anxious to get everybody back and put that all together, you know, put a strong fall together and hopefully be able to make a push come springtime.”
