Coach Merkle is trying to do everything in his power to come back to Chardon and be a part of the baseball program. Ty played here from 2004-2007. After he found out a new coach was hired last year he wanted to come back to help the program out. He played varsity his junior and senior year. He was part of the first ever PAC champs for Chardon for baseball. Greg Fronk and Allen Herner were the coaches for the team then. Ty Merkle played center field and batted 5th for the PAC champs. There were many categories that he excelled in. Ty was 2nd on the team in RBI’S, 1st in steals, and 2nd in home runs.
“The reason why that season was so much fun was because we were winning a lot of games with my best friends and coaches Greg Fronk and Allen Herner made it a fun playing environment” said, Ty Merkle. There were many reasons why Ty wanted to come back to Chardon and coach baseball. He wanted to bring back that fun playing environment to the kids just like Coach Fronk and Coach Herner did. Newly hired coach Brian Long wanted a whole new staff for the baseball program so he went up to Ty and Coach Riola to help him out this year with the baseball program. Merkle didn’t wait long to give Coach Long his decision. Ty accepted the job and became the head JV coach. A big reason why he was asked to coach was because they wanted to keep the Chardon alumni in the program. In Coach Merkles first year he finished 11-7. If there was a PAC championship for JV they would have been PAC champs steamrolling every team in the PAC. Coach Merkle is going into his 2nd year as the JV head coach and expects the same success that he had last year.