By Mike Clark

Leonard Haith remembers the hard times.

A former Division I pitcher for North Carolina A&T, Haith had experience as a travel baseball coach in the northwest suburbs when he arrived at Kelvyn Park as a teacher for the 2017-18 school year.

He didn’t coach at the small neighborhood school in the Hermosa neighborhood that year and the Panthers baseball team finished 0-14.

He took over a program the following year that had nowhere to go but up. And it has, finishing as conference runner-up in 2023 and winning the program’s first conference title since 1998 this spring in the Public League North Central. That earned the Panthers a promotion to the Public League North for next season.

It’s been a long and sometimes winding road to get to this point.

“My first year here, we didn’t have uniforms,” Haith said. “I had to go out and buy T-shirts and get a company to put some numbers on the back. And then hats — I remember ordering 25 hats on Amazon and we just played with some black, solid hats — nothing on them. But we were out there playing.”

There have been challenges on that score too. The Panthers’ home games are at Riis Park, almost three miles to the west. And practices sometimes have to happen in the 106-year-old school’s gym for lack of a better outdoor alternative.

That team finished 1-7-1 in 2019 and then came the pandemic. By the time the Panthers played another game, it was three years later.

Baseball doesn’t have much of a presence in the neighborhood around the school, where soccer is the dominant sport. Most of Haith’s players had no baseball experience when they joined the program. 

But he persevered.

“I love the game,” he said. “And I just wanted to give back. When I got here I saw that baseball just wasn’t something that kids did here. And I knew what baseball was able to do for me, and the opportunities it gave me to meet different people and travel all across the (United) States.

“So I just wanted to give back and have that shared experience with them.”

As important as the success on the field — maybe more so, in Haith’s mind — has been what happens away from the diamond. The Panthers have had team-building activities like bowling and a trip to UIC to do a campus tour and take in a Flames baseball game.

All that was in the future, though, when the Panthers finally got back on the field in 2022. They went 5-11 and Haith saw some reasons for hope.

“Kids started taking baseball a little bit more seriously,” he said. “We started coming in a little bit during the summer … kids started showing up early in the morning before school. That’s when they started seeing how fun baseball could be.”

Last spring, the Panthers were over .500 at 8-5 and finished second in the Public League North Central. Current senior Angel Serrano Pagan joined the program that season and admittedly had a steep learning curve.

“To be honest,” he said, “I was horrible. I didn’t know how to hold the ball (to throw). It was going everywhere.”

But that changed.

“I feel like I’m fast at learning things,” Serrano Pagan said. “So when it came down to baseball I just started following everything and picking it up really great.”

He improved enough to play all over the field this year, including catcher and every infield position but first base.

Serrano Pagan helped the Panthers take another step forward this spring, going 12-3 and winning the North Central for the second conference title in program history. They’ll move up to the Public League North next spring.

Two sophomores played starring roles this season. First baseman/pitcher Tyshawn Johnson hit .600 and scored 15 runs, while center fielder/pitcher Tayveon Johnson batted .519 with 14 runs.

Tyshawn Johnson, who also plays basketball for the Panthers, did have some baseball experience but stopped playing during the pandemic and just got back on the diamond last spring.

Now he’s honing his skills and looking forward to even bigger things, especially as a pitcher.

“A curveball, I’m working on it,” he said. “It needs a little work but it’s gonna get there.”

For Tayveon Johnson, winning conference was great, but playing a game at UIC’s Granderson Field during the Jackie Robinson Weekend event may have been even better.

“Playing at UIC made me feel like I was playing in the (major) leagues, like the Cubs and White Sox,” he said.

Like Tyshawn Johnson, Tayveon played youth baseball before the pandemic and also plays basketball at Kelvyn Park.

Returning to the diamond is an investment in his future, among other things.

“In high school, you can get offers, you can go places for playing sports,” he said.

The Panthers haven’t had any players go on to the next level since Haith took over. But he sees it as just a matter of time.

“The end (goal) is to get some of these kids out of here with an opportunity to go play at a JUCO or a different level,” he said. “That’s the intent.”