VERO BEACH — With a 24-and-4 record and a trip to the Florida high school baseball state semifinals on the horizon, most coaches might spend their time breaking down film or dialing in pitching rotations.
Bryan Rahal, head baseball coach at Vero Beach High School, is more likely to be thinking about whether his players are being better sons and brothers.
Rahal's Indians have become one of the most formidable programs in Florida's highest classification this season, but the coach is quick to deflect any suggestion that winning is the goal — even with a spot in the final four on the line.
"Forget what wins and losses are, what the back of your bubble gum card says,” Rahal says. “It's more about the success of the kids and those smiles."
Rahal credits the season's success to resilience and the steady hand of veteran players — "three or four guys in our lineup that are three-year starters," he says — who helped the team navigate its early weeks after losing a significant group of seniors from last year's roster. As younger players grew more comfortable and confident, the wins followed.
But for Rahal, the metrics that matter most don't appear in any box score. "We really believe here that if we could work on being great in the classroom, being great in the community, working hard off the field — to be good human beings, to be better sons, to be better brothers, grandsons, all those things — then by default we're going to be successful on the field," he said.
"Everybody's trying to rush out to get on the field. Playing the game is fun. Sometimes it's the other parts of life that get a little tedious."
"Baseball's a microcosm of life,” Rahal says. “There's going to be ups and downs, there's going to be adversity, there's going to be tough times. Those are times where if you choose to be average, anybody could do that."
Motivation, Rahal says, comes from keeping that bigger picture in focus — especially during the grind of a long Florida high school season, where academics and athletics compete for the same hours. He describes a campus where demanding teachers push students hard, and where his job as a coach is to remind players that showing up isn't enough.
This weekend, Vero Beach will play at a Major League spring training facility — the CenturyLink Sports Complex in Fort Myers, home to the Minnesota Twins during spring training.
Rahal acknowledges there may be some nostalgia in playing in a big-league park, but says his team's mindset is more straightforward: execute what's gotten them here.
It is, in some ways, fitting that a program with this philosophy would call Vero Beach home. The city sits in the shadow of the old Dodgertown complex — now the Jackie Robinson Training Complex — where the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers held spring training for over 60 years. Rahal says that history isn't lost on his players, and it ties directly into his core message.
"Life's more than being a baseball player,” Rahal says. “It's about being a great human being, giving back to humanity, doing the right things, and making somebody smile. What a great example we have right here of what Jackie Robinson did for humanity."
Rahal says what he loves most about coaching at Vero Beach is the culture — kids who are coachable, families who are engaged, and a community that provides something harder to manufacture than talent: genuine support. "It's just a great mix of support and guidance and good people," he said.
Whatever happens this weekend in Fort Myers, Bryan Rahal seems like a coach who will be measuring the result against a very different standard than the final score.