“We were very fearful we weren’t going to get anything in the summer,” Dibert said. “Our 18-year-olds who were seniors get their spring season taken from them unfortunately and then they wouldn’t have had a summer to go and play. We’re very fortunate.”
The summer season has been a blessing for those players, including the 18-year-olds who likely won’t play again, said Kenton Ridge grad Calvin Dibert, Jacob’s son. Many of the players began high school practice in March, but their season was eventually cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When it got shut down, you kind of don’t believe it at first,” Calvin Dibert said. “It was very shocking. When I found out it got taken away, it didn’t hit me at first. When we found out we could play this summer, it was a big relief. It gives me something to do almost every day this summer.”
The tournament is typically played on Memorial Day, but was rescheduled for late July. The final will be held at 4 p.m. Sunday at the stadium. Admission is $5 per person.
The beginning
Early in his coaching career, Al Fulk was an assistant coach at Kenton Ridge under Clark County Baseball Hall of Famer Tom Randall. In 1981, Fulk was tasked with putting together a summer team for players from Kenton Ridge and Northeastern High School.
They wore baby blue uniforms loaned to them from the old Jim Foreman summer team, Fulk said. They’ve worn those colors ever since.
The next season, Fulk opened the team up to different players around the area. A few years later, he was hired as the head coach at Urbana University. He would recruit them to play for both the Blue Knights and Armorloy. He later did the same thing when he became the head coach at Clark State Community College in Springfield.
Jacob Dibert played for the club in 1997 and started coaching with Fulk in 1998.
“I didn’t really have much to do in the summer,” he said. “I told Coach Fulk I’d like to come back and help. He said he needed an assistant and it took off from there. I’ve been co
aching with him ever since.”
Fulk won more than a thousand games in 35 years with Armoloy, including four USA Wooden Bat Tournament championships and the 1988 Connie Mack state championship and X. Both of his sons, Lewis and Wade Fulk, played and coached for the club. He was named to the Clark County Baseball Hall of Fame in 2010.
“I thought I would coach until I die,” Fulk said. “The biggest shock to me is that it’s the 40th year and I’m not the head coach, but I just sort of ran out of gas.”
The transition
After three-and-a-half decades coaching college and summer ball, Fulk became burnt out, especially with the long road trips.
“I just started dreading away games and trickled over to the summer,” he said. “I loved the home games, but I started thinking ‘Do I really want to drive to Columbus today, then Hillsboro tomorrow and Greenville the next day?’ I just started wearing out.”
Five years ago, Dibert and longtime assistant coach Joey Wagner took over the program. They eclipsed 100 wins last year and won more games this summer than they have in any of the previous four seasons.
They had a feeder program already in place, the Springfield Diamond Kings, where the current 18-year-old group began playing as 12-year-olds. Five players remain from the first Diamond Kings team.
Next summer, they’re planning to have teams at both the 15U and 18U levels. Tryouts are being held later this month for both teams at Kenton Ridge on July 28 (6 p.m., 18U), July 29 (6 p.m., 15U) and Aug. 1 (15U at 4 p.m. and 18U at 6 p.m.).
Overall, Armoloy has more than 600 alumni who have played for the team over the last four decades. Several were in the stands for Friday’s tournament game.
“We’re not a team, we’re more of a family,” Jacob Dibert said. “That goes for the guys who played all the back in the 80s to this year. They support these kids and they back them no matter what.”
A lot of rust
As the sports world began to reopen from the pandemic, Jacob Dibert and his coaching staff had to do something it hadn’t done before — start from scratch.
“I’m used to having kids who are primed and ready to go,” Jacob Dibert said. “It was different. We had to start with 30-pitch counts or one inning for each guy, depending on how it goes. If you pitched nine pitches, sorry, that was your inning.”
The season wraps up this weekend with the Armoloy tournament, which typically serves as the team’s opening games of the summer season. The group is just now starting to see some of the rust knock off, Jacob Dibert said.
“We’ve been very fortunate to play a lot of games,” he said. “The first weekend of June we hit the ground running a hundred miles an hour. I’ve always appreciated the work that high school coaches do, but it puts it in a new perspective for me to start from scratch with these kids. There’s never been a year like this. It’s been very odd and strange.”
The team has played tournaments in Cincinnati and Cleveland. They also recently finished second in the East Tennessee State University Summer Classic in Johnson City, Tenn.
“It’s been pretty fun,” Dibert said. “It’s my last year playing baseball and pretty much everyone else’s last year playing baseball so it’s been nice.”
The club will finish its season — one it was uncertain would even happen — this weekend.
“We’re blessed just to be able to play at this point,” Jacob Dibert said. “That’s the good thing. I wish the summer would never end, but eventually it has to. I’m so proud of this group.”
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