LAUNCH: A League Of His Own

The stats are impressive — 40 seasons, 765 wins, 14 district titles. But that’s not all Jay Higgins has to show for four decades of coaching the Lake Highlands Wildcats baseball team. There’s also the untold number of young men whose lives he has impacted, and many of them recently returned to the ball field for a surprise ceremony before the last home game of the season, where Higgins and his wife, Julie, were honored on the pitcher’s mound while longtime fans stood to their feet and cheered. Now 64, Higgins has coached multiple generations, including the sons of some of his players from the early years. In the ever-changing, often cutthroat world of high school sports, parents say they are grateful for the stability Higgins provides — an “old school tradition,” says Wildcat parent Sylvia Bodell, that is “rarely experienced by today’s kids.”