Kile Rogers knew that Williamstown was the place for him after a meeting with club president Ryan Camov and multiple club champion Aaron Green.
Rogers, a young playing coach at 25 years of age, had come off a successful rebuild of the program at Port Melbourne and wanted a fresh challenge at a club with bigger ambitions in the short term and a shot returning to the top tier of baseball in Victoria.
Rogers has one goal – to take the Wolves back to division 1.
“I really liked what they had to say, where the club was at and where they wanted it to be,” he said. “I thought this is a great place to take that next step. I know division 2 fairly well but I’d like to get back to division 1 sooner rather than later.”
Rogers arrived at Port Melbourne two years ago with the first team on its knees.
Simply winning a game was an achievement at a club that had experienced some barren years.
Rogers took the team to the brink of finals and gave it optimism for the future.
“I just tried to rebuild that program, get a junior program up and get back to basics,” he said.
“We were on the edge of finals towards the end of last season, which is a pretty good result for a club that hadn’t won a game for four years before I got there,” he said.
Rogers – who crossed to the Wolves with his brother, Staci, a catcher – began his career at Preston before moving to Malvern.
He tried his hand overseas, playing a year at junior college as a pitcher in the US, but his arm is only utilised these days as a middle infielder.
It is with the bat where Rogers hopes to make the most impact this summer.
Lance Jenkinson
