Longtime Baseball Coach Takes Final Bow
After over four decades of coaching high school baseball around Hampton Roads, John Ingram decided to retire this year. Ingram helped both Cox and Cape Henry to the top of their districts.
When John Ingram strolls past the fence just outside the Cape Henry baseball field, the sounds will be the same.
The crack of the bat, the slapping of a line drive into a glove of a diving fielder, and the shouts of "Hey, coach!" from the stands and dugouts.
Ingram's been hearing those sounds for over four decades. But for the upcoming school year, for the first time since today's players' parents weren't even yet in high school, he'll be hearing them from the stands instead of the dugout.
"It was just time," Ingram says as two summer league teams square off on the field he helped bring a TCIS title two years ago. "I loved Cape Henry and the kids I coached, but I'm just tried, and it's time for me to move on, to enjoy my life on the back porch and in my garden and traveling."
After finishing up at Princess Anne in 1960, Ingram hoped his travels would take him all the way to baseball's big leagues.
"I'd have signed for a hamburger and a bus ticket," recalls Ingram, who spent four years on the Cavalier mounds before throwing at Old Dominion University. "I threw a nice overhand curveball, but I was basically too small."
His trek toward the majors never made it past the tryout level, but armed with a degree in physical education, Ingram headed back to Hampton Roads to start his career in coach mode.
"I had played all my life," he says, "and if I couldn't play, at least I could stay involved." He started the 1965 season at Virginia Beach Junior High, then headed to Kempsville. All the while teaching gym, he made it to Cox High in 1990.
"I think because I loved it to much as a player, and the kids really loved it," he says of what kept him in the coaching clique. "It was an opportunity to stay with the sport that I loved and to work with the kids that love doing it. I think I really made a difference in some of their lives. Once I got into it, it was really difficult to get out."
There's over a generation of players who are glad he didn't. Six years after taking the Cox reins, Ingram watched the Falcons bring home their first-ever Eastern Region and state AAA titles in the same year.
"He taught us how to play the game right," says Jason Dubois, who pitched and player first base for the titlist squad. "The biggest strength was that we gelled well. We were friends on and off the field. We played together during the winter and fall months, and Coach Ingram was always there, watching, keeping the team together."
After finishing up at Cox, Dubois continued his talents at Virginia Commonwealth University, then found a spot in the Chicago Cubs organization. After briefly playing in the majors for the Cubs in 2004 and the Cleveland the next season, he spent time in the minors with Baltimore (playing a season with the Norfolk Tides) and Washington before heading back to the Cubs organization in January. Dubois now plays for the Triple-A Iowa Cubs, one step below the bigs.
"(Ingram) was a good teacher of the game," Dubois says. "He always made it seem simpler than it was. He made baseball fun."
Before he was even old enough for high school, Robert Morey was learning from Ingram.
"I knew him from working at camps at Cox High School," Morey says. "I met him when I was about 12. He was always one of my favorite coaches. When I heard he was coming to Cape Henry, I was pretty excited."
In 2004, as Morey was preparing to start his ninth grade year, Ingram headed across town to take over for the Dolphins.
"He was a great coach to play for," Morey remembers. "When things aren't going well, he's right there with you. He'll tell you straight up if you're doing something wrong, and I like that in a coach."
Over the next few years, the Dolphins kept finding ways past perennial league powerhouse Greenbrier Christian, one of the few local teams to beat the Gators three years in a row. They crept toward the top of the league - and in 2007, with Morey having a Player of the League season from the mound, the Dolphins brought home a TCIS title.
"That state championship (at Cox) was certainly one of my biggest highlights," says Ingram, "but over (at Cape Henry), winning the conference championship ranks right up there."
Now at the University of Virginia, Morey carries on the curveball teachings that took his coach to the same level.
"He showed me how to throw a 12-6-down curveball, and to have confidence in my fastball," says Morey, who played for a Cavalier squad that won a school record 49 games last year and made it to the College World Series for the first time ever. "A lot of curveballs sweep from right to left. Mine goes from straight up to straight down, like going from 12 to six on a clock."
After so many years on the field, Ingram decided that his coaching clock was winding down.
"I've been fortunate enough to win several awards," he says (Ingram was named the TCIS's top coach when Cape Henry won the title, and Virginia's top leader when Cox grabbed its own championship). "That's fortunate, but I can't do it without my players. I've had some great kids. I helped turn around the program at Cox, and I've made (CH) into a respected program, but it takes good players to do it. I've been fortunate."
